Happy New Year ye all....I m finally back to the blogging community after a long time....All this while inertia has kept my blog posts in check and I've not been doing any writing at all....but I do miss writing...which is why I made sure I created that external mental force to overcome that internal inertia to get back (Ok now...I think I should stop blabbering and move on with something sensible).
Time runs by so quickly....It looks like the year just started and its gone in no time...I was having this discussion with one of my friend about time going by so quickly and he just mentioned that we are the ones who are making time run by so fast....Isn't time infinite....why are we splitting it up slicing it into seconds...minutes...hours...days...years....decades....centuries....and I-don't know what comes after this etc....This thought struck me when I was trying to get up to go to work today....(A soul like me who is just out of a vacation from India and has not found the inspiration to start working is definitely bound to think like this)...A friend gave me a wake up call at 6:45 and I picked the phone and promised myself that I was getting up...but just wanted to give the poor me 5 minutes more to sleep....and that is when I started cursing everyone around me....Why the heck does time have to be divided like this....This thought also came a couple of months back when both my watches (the only ones I had) stopped working and I did not want to spend money on getting a fancy watch for myself ... I just wanted to experiment my living without looking at time...and I found it so hard intially...but later my mind got used to estimating time and I started living by it.....so the point was even without an actual clock I was still living a time synchronized living....I would love to experience how it would feel like if there was no time....Well that would not be plausible would it??? 
OK NOW I M SERIOUSLY INTERESTED IN DISCUSSING THE POSSIBILITY OF NO TIME AND INFINITE TIME
I have a series of questions and I'm looking for answers as I always am (I don't seem to have answers to anything...only questions hmmm...)...If anyone has answers for these questions or would love to ask questions with me pls feel free to post them :)
1. IS TIME NECESSARY FOR EXISTENCE OF A PARTICLE OR LIVING BEING OR ANYTHING THAT MOVES?
I know that time is necessary for motion because anything moves with respect to time....so motion is necessary for ones existence....talking about humans...every single signal within the body like the EEG, EMG, ECG etc is with respect to time....so when there is no time....(i.e) '0' time then one will not have any signals in the body (Is that what it means?) So people will stop existing? Maybe.....What about things...like non living things for instance.....Well one argument could be that they don't exist in the first place....but they are still made up of atomic and sub-atomic particles (Me being a complete ignorant person in quantum physics) there is still the fact that within any particle electrons absorb energy and 'move' to the next quantum level. Is this movement possible when there is not time?? Cos time would always be the x-axis of any sort of motion.....UNLESS ONE MAKES A MOVEMENT AT THE VELOCITY OF LIGHT....WHICH IS WHERE TIME BECOMES ZERO. Now that brings me to the second question....Read on...
2. WHY DOES TIME BECOME ZERO WHEN WE TRAVEL IN THE VELOCITY OF LIGHT? (HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION AS WE NEED TO HAVE ALMOST ZERO MASS TO DO THIS)
So being a poor physicist I can't really figure out the scientific explanation behind it....but let's think logically....why do we see things...because light that gets reflected from the objects enter our eye and from those rays our mind reconstructs the objects ...Now it takes some finite time for the light to hit the object get reflected and come back to our eye for it to get processed....But if we travel in the velocity of light....you will not be able to see anything rite?? Cos by the time the reflected rays from the objects hits your eye you would have moved by the same distance of your initial position of viewing and the object...so this means that nothing can be seen at zero time....and obviously such a thing is not possible as our mass increases when we travel at a higher velocity (SO DO RUNNERS RUNNING AT HIGH SPEEDS WEIGH MORE? I have to check that next time I run)..and we need to have infinite source of energy to accelerate the infinite mass we will have to get to the speed of light (I might be wrong here). It was interesting discussing about zero time but that is more likely an impossibility unless maybe you see light emitting sources when you are travelling at the speed of light...I don't know what you'd see then...Any ideas on how the light emitting object would look like when you are travelling at the speed of light???
3. HOW CAN WE MAKE TIME SLOWER?
I had this status message up in orkut saying that time travels slower the faster you go.This definitely makes sense for a lot of people...cos when I get up in the morning all brisk do things very quickly...I can get to work quickly....so I am travelling by space...(actually I m walking and doing all my morning stuff running to work...everything in space....so I m actually not travelling in time but in space...so it saves me time....so If I keep going real fast in space time will be very slow for me (Like for instance if I keep running all day busy with things....instead of sitting here and blogging about worthless stuff...time'll be really slow....For instance when I am sleeping I travel by time...or any time that I m stationary I travel by time....and it just runs by so quickly....NO WONDER I ALWAYS HAVE A FEELING THAT MY SLEEPING TIME IS ALWAYS LESS....cos time travels fast when I travel by time.
So are time and space exchangeable....this is one question that has been bothering me heavily right from the time I moved from signal processing to image processing...and I m yet to figure out the answer.....so let's consider a signal which has only time as its only independent variable...so lets maybe take an example of sound as a signal and plot it across time...that makes sense....but a picture for instance is also as a result of a signal....a light signal....but it has to be specified by two parameters....X and Y that form the spatial co-ordinates of that object that is being imaged....But the funny thing here is these X and Y parameters that call themselves 'space' cannot be replaced with time....we can maybe take lot of pictures over time and have an extra dimension of time to it....But in this case (specifically wrt an image...space and time are not replaceable???...Any clarifications on this would be really appreciated....)
4. What would happen if thoughts were to travel greater than the speed of light? (HYPOTHETICAL AGAIN....YOU SHOULD HAVE A VACUUM FILLED BODY (haha I probably have a brain like that) for thoughts to travel at or greater than the speed of light)
Maybe we can understand everybody else's thoughts even before seeing them (WOoooooow that sounds exciting....Like straight out of a sci-fi movie :))....
Nevertheless....I can only conclude that time has always existed and will continue to exist....and if time ceases to exist then nothing can exist....But the most interesting question was who found time??? Like who discovered time (Cos it has always existed??? Who sliced it up into seconds, minutes, hours, days, years etc....That generation have contributed the most to human kind because I can't imagine spending time infinitely.
Finally Time is Satyam (The Ultimate Truth), Shivam (God), Sundaram (Beautiful).
Anyways All ye Good ppl..Don't you think its time to wind up....If you've gotten to reading my posting until this point....You're wonderful...May God Bless you (or Save yo u :P :)). I'll be back soon :)
UPDATE: ONLY WHEN I AM WRITING A POST ON TIME....TIME ITSELF BEHAVES WEIRD....I STARTED WRITING THIS POST ON THE 5TH OF JANUARY BUT POSTED IT ONLY ON THE 8TH OF JANUARY....BUT THE TIME STILL SHOWS 5TH....ISN'T IT CREEPY :) ;) :)
Monday, January 5, 2009
Timeless Time
Posted by
priti
at
7:22 PM
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12 comments:
Very interesting blog. My 2 cents worth.
Would it be fair if I say that you have ignored a fundamental point? Just like the existence of the earth or the sun or the ocean/weather blah blah and their inter-relationships cannot be questioned, the existence of time (as we call it) cannot be questioned.
Time is defined by mankind and the concept helps put things in perspective. Suppose you did not have the concept of time, would we still observe the same things as we do now? The answer is yes! Therefore to your first question, Is time relevant for existence? The answer is again a big YES but it need not be called time and it need to be split into seconds or minutes or hours. But the general "phenomena" exists and thus by definition is relevant for existence.
When we can question the existence of time, can we not question the existence of zero? If we do that then is time time ever zero? Zero is again a definition. What if we did not have these definitions. Would this question arise?
Slow or fast is a relative concept. For instance if you cut time into an attosecond/femtosecond, it (time) barely moves. But this is relative to a second. Thus we come back to the same point, measurement/speed depends on how we define time. By choosing not to define time, we cannot state that time does not exist. It exists but maybe the definition is different.
aah..let me stop rambling now...
Anup: Thanks for the perspective :)....I guess the fundamental point that I ignored was what I concluded with....That time has always existed.....Interesting discussion about '0' there....I never thought that way....afterall we live life by definitions...Well just one thought on the same lines....Although '0' is just a definition...'nothing' has always existed rite??? There has to be nothingness for there to be somethingness in the world...Don't you think??? :) As you correctly pointed out....time has different dimensions....If you go faster than the dimension that you set for yourself then time goes slow....Like for instance you live life by seconds...time'll definitely go slower for you unlike a person who lives life by hours. Thanks again for the thoughtful comment :)
@ Priti: Let me add some more thoughts. If we take a step back and stop measuring things/stop giving names or definitions, what happens? NOTHING! Thus "Nothing" is always relative to "something". Has "nothing" always existed? In principle yes but if we had a different definition for the same term, this discussion would be in another direction. In sum, the arguments would end up being circular and less interesting. We can pose this problem through the lens of statistical reasoning. It is a problem akin to having a credible null hypothesis (in the sense the alternate hypothesis is either always true or never true). If "time" in principle always exists/does not exist then the alternate hypothesis is meaningless. Thus the question is no longer interesting from an inferential perspective.
However, I think an even more interesting line of thought flows from this discussion. How does a "definition" alter the way the world works? What happens if we think of "definitions" as "placeholders" in a society? Imagine a library without placeholders. What happens if we need to find a book? Chaos! With placeholders things hopefully will move smoothly. The concept can be easily ported to life but it tends to be a little more complex.
The inherent definitions lead people in a particular "path". Thus most of us tend to exhibit path dependence. Path dependence arises because definitions or interpretations differ depending on where you are. For instance, consider the case of "time". in some places time is money and hence efficiency is what you grow up with. In other places time is meant to be enjoyed and thus it is not efficiency but quality of life that matters. Thus, spending time in an environment can lead to path dependence in your actions. And different actions leads to different outcomes.
Similarly think of the "definition" of religion. One can easily ask the question - Does religion exist? The answer most definitely is a yes! (since we cannot prove otherwise). But people operationalized it in different ways. Different people follow different religions and the resultant outcome is the state of the world is as we see now. Again we see considerable path dependence. Now what if our definitions on religion were different? Would the world have followed a different path? Could we have averted religious wars? What is the role of definitions in shaping how we live life?
That to me is a more interesting question. Existence is never questioned! The bigger question is how we shape our beliefs on "existence". What say u????
PS: Speaking of time and religion...In the mahabharatha Lord Krishna held time constant for Arjuna to kill Jayadratha. This suggests that time did not exist in that phase (this is the only known example i can think of).
BTW: on second thoughts...did time stop in the Mahabharata??? Arjuna was still continuing towards his goal..hence there was motion...guess time did not stop afterall!
Anup: I agree with you....You can make anything circular and less interesting by defining perspectives on the direct things involved....I loved your analogy of the definitions with placeholders and Library....fits in perfectly with the context....The more I think about it....It makes sense....Time means different things for different people....It is what we make of it I guess....The concept of Path dependence is very true....esp in terms of religion....That brings it to a point where right and wrong itself are mostly path dependent....LIke for instance the kids in Kashmir who have been subject to so much of torture by both Indians and Pakistanis just for the mistake of being born in the place would definitely think of terrorism as the way out for them...But when you look at the whole picture it doesn't seem so right....I guess the whole concept of religion....spirituality etc came into the forefront just to make us aware of the best things for all people not necessarily for a select few....Again...this is one thing that I have always believed and would love to write about it sometime..."That every single person in this world in interconnected with each other (LIke in a many-many relationship)....But what happens in one person's life can have a profound effect on the other person's life although our naked eyes can't really visualize it....If something Bad happens to us...Then something 10 times good happens to someone else in this world and when he/she is in the most need of it...So I guess whatever happens to us in our lives is nothing but the maximization of happiness and the minimization of misery for the world taken as a whole :) Talk about balance again.
I liked that statistical reasoning of yours...interesting to note that....pardon my ignorance with statistics...but I always thought that null hypothesis was assumed to be false apriori...Would be really helpful if you could expand on that..:)
@ Priti: You should write about spirituality. I'm sure there are multiple views on the concept. Will reserve my detailed comments on the topic after you pen down the blog. Max of happiness and Min of misery (dual problem). So achieving one automatically implies the other. Does it lead to balance? depends on whose perspective we ask :-).
On to statistics. Well you have just pointed out one of the biggest problems associated with statistical inference (from a frequentist's perspective). The debate is also highly philosophical. Here is my take. In general the null hypothesis is always true and what we do is to try to find data which will help us reject the null. But a major problem with statistical analysis is that most times when we set up the null, we kind of know that it will never hold, thus making it less interesting (similar to the example in the earlier comment). From an academic perspective, there is a massive block on publishing null results (in the sense publishing papers where the null hypothesis is not rejected). So I would say that philosophically the null is not supposed to be false, but it ends up being the straw man which can always be rejected.
A deeper question is the value of rejecting the null or null hypothesis testing in general. Following Karl Popper and his ideas on empirical falsification, it is easy to see that rejecting/accepting the null means nothing really. There might be a hundred reasons for rejecting/accepting the null. For instance consider an instance of Hempel's famous paradox. Suppose the null is that "All ravens are black". Thus if the particular object is a raven then it is black. Now from the laws of logic this is equivalent to the statement that if an object is not black then it is not a raven. Therefore if we observe an orange it proves that all raven's are black. Similarly if we observe an apple we still prove that all raven's are black. There could be million totally unrelated observations which can prove or disprove your null, thus suggesting that empirical falsification does not really tell us much about whether the alternative hypothesis is the true reason for the phenomena.
@Anup: Thanks that was very informative....The hypothesis issue always confuses me....for the very sense in which it is taken....Like if you want to prove something then why not take that as a Null Hypothesis and prove it right instead of taking something that you don't want to prove and calling that null and rejecting it....It is like negating a negative sentence...Unga explanation kettu oru statistics class pona feel vardhu :)...That was very good...understandable statistics I've heard in a while...I actually have been wanting to write about spirituality in a long time...I used to read a lot into Bhagvad Gita and had some really good discussions with friends which I wanted to put down but it just got lost in time...I have to do some more reading and more discussing before posting on a serious topic like that :)
@ Priti: Statistics in general is quite interesting. While the hypothesis testing part can be confusing, I have found that most times students struggle with basic probability theory. It is strange but true!
Coming to why we can't flip the hypothesis for testing. It is again a scientific norm and makes comparison of work much easier. So i guess that is the reason why rejection of the null is popular. But the bigger issue is how to do it in an unbiased manner.
Spirituality can mean a lot of things to different people. In fact if we understand the true essence of "spirituality", i think we have reached a stage of "moksha" (just a personal view). Look forward to your posts on the same.
Wonderful post.
I recognize Time as the one which confirms our very own existence. It is the one we create by comprehending it. And we cannot live without it. Let me stop there. Otherwise, I will be copying the ideas which you have written. :)
You have written all those things I have thought about Time..... :)
As Max has said, I welcome spiritual posts from you.
man .. do you drink philosophical drink?
back here after a while
nice template priti/...
arambichiteengala??!!
din read the post fully... no time now.. but really enjoyed till i read.. and feelin so happy to feel your thoughts :)
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