The other 5 Mind-Blowing Attempts At Explaining Time

Time Doesn’t Exist

There’s also the idea that time doesn’t exist at all, which was wholeheartedly argued in the early 1900s by a philosopher named J.M.E. McTaggart. According to McTaggart, there are two different ways we can look at time. The first, called A-Theory, states that time has an order and flows along a path; in this version of time, it’s possible to organize things as they happen. There’s a progression of events from the past to the present to the future.B-Theory, on the other hand, states that the passing of time—and time itself—is a complete illusion, and there is no way to objectively assign events a particular order. This version of time is seemingly supported by our memories, which tend to recall events as individual pockets of time, not as an overall flow or passage of time.Take both these theories into account, and it proves that time doesn’t exist because in order for it to exist, there needs to be a continuous change in events, the world, or in circumstances. The B-Theory is by its own definition not a reference to the passage of time, and there is no unfolding change. Therefore, time doesn’t exist. But if the A-Theory is accurate, that too suggests that time can’t exist. Take a moment in time—say, your 21st birthday. At one point, this was a point in the future, but this same moment will someday exist in the past. Since a moment can’t be past, present, and future, McTaggart says that theory is contradictory and therefore impossible—along with time itself.

Four-Dimensionalism And Block Universe Theory

The theory of four-dimensionalism and block universe theory are connected by the idea of time as an actual dimension. In four-dimensionalism, all objects exist in four dimensions rather than three, and the fourth dimension, time, can be thought of in terms of the other three dimensions. Block universe theory imagines the entire universe as a dimensional block made up of slices of time. It has width, depth, and height, and for everything and every event that has a measurable duration, there are essentially layers of time that form its whole. Every person is a four-dimensional object that exists in layers of time—there are layers of time for infancy, for childhood, for adolescence, and so on. Time doesn’t, in itself, exist in such a way that there’s a past, present, and future, but each point within the block is any one of those three things in reference to other points of time. The block universe theory also leaves room for the idea of infinite time, both past and future, by saying that the dimensional block can extend into infinity in either direction. What it doesn’t leave room for is change in the future—since the occurrence of the events in the block of time already exist, the future has already been decided.

The Oddball Effect

Occasionally, we hear stories of someone who’s in a life-threatening or terrifying situation in which they swear that time slows down. It’s often when we’re faced with an event that’s happening on a massive scale, or when something completely unexpected occurs; it’s such a widespread phenomenon that there’s been a lot of discussion on whether or not we’re really experiencing time slowing down to allow us to process all the information we’re being confronted with. Researchers first looked at what it would mean if time really did slow down for us. We would be able to see things in greater quality, and we’d be able to pick out greater details as images flashed by us. The brain tends to blend stimuli together into one event, as long as that information is received less than 80 milliseconds apart. So if time slows, we should recognize stimuli as separate events. Participants in the study were shown a series of flashing numbers to determine the point at which the brain overcame time and made it impossible to distinguish the different numbers in the series. Once they were tested for their baseline, they were then asked to do the same thing while being dropped from a 46-meter (150 ft) tower. Then, they were also asked to watch other people fall from the same tower, and estimate how long those falls were in comparison with their own. When asked to time their own fall, participants estimated that it was about 36 percent longer than the falls of the people they were watching. That, coupled with the results showing that people weren’t any better at identifying numbers when placed in a situation that made them theoretically experience slowed time, suggests that it’s not the moment that’s slowed down for us, but our recollection of it. While it would have an amazing practical benefit if we could experience slowed time, it’s now hypothesized that it’s something in our memories that makes terrifying events seem to last forever.

Khronos, Kronos, and Father Time

Before Greek philosophers took a crack at explaining time, there was a mythological explanation, and that explanation includes the original figure of Father Time. Before there was anything, there were the primordial gods Khronos and Ananke. Khronos was the god of time, imagined as part man, part lion, and part bull. Ananke, a serpent, wrapped around the egg of the world in a symbol of eternity. Khronos also shows up in Greco-Roman mythology, where he’s depicted as standing within the wheel of a zodiac. Ungoverned by time, he can be either an old or young man, much like today’s images of Father Time and the baby of the new year. Khronos was the father of the titans and is often used interchangeably with Kronos, who was also associated with time. Kronos was the titan responsible for de-throning and castrating his father, and who would later be killed by his own son, Zeus. It was Khronos who was responsible for the progression of time through the seasons and through the years from the very beginning, but the things that happened to men and women within that time were the domain of someone else.We largely relate to time by what happens to us in its passage. We grow up and then we grow old. That life cycle of man wasn’t the domain of time, but of the Moirai. Klotho spun the thread of life, beginning the cycle for everyone. Lakhesis measured how long the thread would be, while Atropos cut the thread. The Moirai would foretell future events as well, suggesting that destiny had already been written. Although the gods controlled the passage of time throughout the seasons, the Moirai were in charge of things happening within it, such as Persephone’s return to her mother Demeter in the summertime or her months with her husband during the winter.

We’re Not Good At Telling Time

Time seems like it would be one of the easiest things to wrap your head around when it comes to discussing the physics of space, time, dimensions, and everything that goes along with them. We’re not really that good at even telling time, though, and we have the track record to prove it. On one hand, there’s sidereal time, which is the time measured by the placement of the stars and the Earth’s rotation. That obviously varies quite a bit, though, so we also have the solar day. That’s based on the amount of time it takes the Earth to make a single rotation on its axis, which is also pretty varied. That’s why we need to take a solar year and average out the length of the rotations to come up with our system of time.Earlier in the 20th century, though, scientists and astronomers discovered that the Earth’s rotation was slowing down. They created Ephemeris Time to account for that, which was phased out in 1979. Then there was Terrestrial Dynamical Time, which was more precise and is based on International Atomic Time. This was discontinued in 1991, when it was technically renamed Terrestrial Time.And if keeping track of time zones seems complicated, even today the positions of the stars and other solar bodies are used in conjunction with Terrestrial Dynamical Time, but with the rest of the world on Universal Time as its practical standard, there needed to be a way to convert the two—that’s Delta T.In other words, we just have no idea what to do with time, even though we use it and live it every day. The most apparently straightforward of all questions regarding time isn’t straightforward at all.

Part 1: http://imgur.com/gallery/ZRaZR
Source (Apologies for not adding it to the first one, as it was rightly pointed out by some helpful Imgurians!): http://listverse.com/2015/01/07/10-mind-blowing-attempts-at-explaining-time/