More thoughts about time
09/03/25 03:54
I wear a relatively sophisticated digital watch that is connected to the Internet. This allows the watch to sync with other clocks and accurately display time. I just watched as it made the annual adjustment to daylight savings time. The second hand swept toward 2 am, and as it came to the top of the dial, the hour hand went instantly from 2 am to 3 am, thus “leaping ahead,” as required by the law. It is the first time I have observed the watch at the moment of the change, and now I’m curious to make the same observance in the fall, when 2 am should turn to 1 am. I know it is silliness. The display on my watch is not a measurement of anything. It displays time as measured through a complex system mediated by various state and federal laws about changing time.
Tomorrow, when I fly from the West Coast to Cleveland, it might be interesting to look at my watch as I fly from Pacific Daylight, over Mountain Daylight, and Central Daylight on my way to Eastern Daylight Time. I suspect that the watch will make the leaps ahead not at the exact moments when we cross the time barrier, but rather at the moments that the watch picks up signals from cell towers. Since my watch and phone will be in Airplane Mode, the change should take place only when we land in Cleveland and the flight attendant instructs us that taking our devices out of Airplane Mode is safe.
Under Newtonian Physics, space and time are constants. They never vary, regardless of the circumstances. Einstein peeled away Newton’s assumptions and arrived at his special theory of relativity, which states that while the laws of physics and the speed of light are constants, time and space can vary. For example, time measured on a fast-moving object passes more slowly than time on a stationary object. NASA’s Twins Study was a coordinated study of identical twins, Mark and Scott Kelly, focused on the time when Scott was traveling in space to the time Mark remained on Earth. Although the study is ongoing, initial results showed some microbiological differences between the twins that appeared to disappear over time after Scott returned to Earth. According to the special theory of relativity, Scott should be just a tiny amount younger than Mark, but that difference may be too small to have any practical implications.
Quantum physics posits theories that are even more remarkable than Special Relativity. At the quantum level, physicists have made some observations that call into question the measurement of the passage of time and the sequence of events. Some quantum research challenges our understanding of the past, present, and future. In the 1990s, physicists fired photons through a barrier as a wave packet. The peak of the packet appeared to emerge from the barrier before they entered. The phenomenon had been predicted before it was observed.
I am no physicist and don’t fully understand the articles I read about quantum mechanics. Still, I do understand that there are scientific observations that call into question our natural sense of time as a linear phenomenon. Just as Einstein proposed that we imagine a curve in the space-time continuum, quantum mechanics allows us to think beyond the image of a line of time altogether.
Observing my watch jump ahead an hour, it appeared that it was not a continuous line, but instead had a leap. At one second, it was 2 am, and the next, it was 3 am. And, if I am alert at 2 am on Sunday, November 2, and observe my watch, it should give the appearance of time moving backwards.
It is impossible to know whether humans are the only creatures that bother with time measurement. While other animals appear to have memory, it is unclear how they experience the passage of time. Does a year seem shorter to an animal that hibernates for months each winter? Does time seem shorter to an insect than to a giant tortoise because of the difference in their lifetimes? Like many other speculative questions, answers may not be apparent in my lifetime. I have learned to be comfortable with a degree of mystery and the simple acknowledgment that there is much about this universe that I do not understand and will never understand.
According to the usual measurement of people in my part of the world, I will turn 72 this year. Understanding time as linear, with a clear-cut past, present, and future, is helpful for me. At some point, I will reach the end of my life. Since others will live beyond my life while I will no longer have a perception of the past, present, and future, they will continue to exist, at least as observed by those living.
In 2019, our daughter gave birth to our grandson in Japan. Her husband sent us a photograph and a text message. His birthday is July 12, but I received the text message and photograph on July 11 because of the difference in time zones. It was a different day on the other side of the International Date Line. I had fun announcing to my colleagues in the meeting, “My daughter just had a baby tomorrow.” Of course, I knew I was not experiencing some vision of the future; only that time was measured differently in different parts of the world.
Before the 1884 Prime Meridian Conference made time zones official, people had no problem accepting that time would differ in different places. Noon occurred whenever the sun was at its highest in the particular place where one was. It might be noon in one town at a different time than in another. Scheduling railroad service, however, required standardization of time, and standardized time zones became the norm worldwide by the dawning of the 20th century.
While I doubt that I’ll invest much energy in observing the movement of the second hand on the digital watch display I wear on my wrist, there are moments when thinking about time is fascinating and entertaining for me.
The next time someone asks me if I have the time, I think I’ll answer, “Yes, I have the time. Do you want to know what my watch says?” It will only confuse the other person but continue to entertain me.
Tomorrow, when I fly from the West Coast to Cleveland, it might be interesting to look at my watch as I fly from Pacific Daylight, over Mountain Daylight, and Central Daylight on my way to Eastern Daylight Time. I suspect that the watch will make the leaps ahead not at the exact moments when we cross the time barrier, but rather at the moments that the watch picks up signals from cell towers. Since my watch and phone will be in Airplane Mode, the change should take place only when we land in Cleveland and the flight attendant instructs us that taking our devices out of Airplane Mode is safe.
Under Newtonian Physics, space and time are constants. They never vary, regardless of the circumstances. Einstein peeled away Newton’s assumptions and arrived at his special theory of relativity, which states that while the laws of physics and the speed of light are constants, time and space can vary. For example, time measured on a fast-moving object passes more slowly than time on a stationary object. NASA’s Twins Study was a coordinated study of identical twins, Mark and Scott Kelly, focused on the time when Scott was traveling in space to the time Mark remained on Earth. Although the study is ongoing, initial results showed some microbiological differences between the twins that appeared to disappear over time after Scott returned to Earth. According to the special theory of relativity, Scott should be just a tiny amount younger than Mark, but that difference may be too small to have any practical implications.
Quantum physics posits theories that are even more remarkable than Special Relativity. At the quantum level, physicists have made some observations that call into question the measurement of the passage of time and the sequence of events. Some quantum research challenges our understanding of the past, present, and future. In the 1990s, physicists fired photons through a barrier as a wave packet. The peak of the packet appeared to emerge from the barrier before they entered. The phenomenon had been predicted before it was observed.
I am no physicist and don’t fully understand the articles I read about quantum mechanics. Still, I do understand that there are scientific observations that call into question our natural sense of time as a linear phenomenon. Just as Einstein proposed that we imagine a curve in the space-time continuum, quantum mechanics allows us to think beyond the image of a line of time altogether.
Observing my watch jump ahead an hour, it appeared that it was not a continuous line, but instead had a leap. At one second, it was 2 am, and the next, it was 3 am. And, if I am alert at 2 am on Sunday, November 2, and observe my watch, it should give the appearance of time moving backwards.
It is impossible to know whether humans are the only creatures that bother with time measurement. While other animals appear to have memory, it is unclear how they experience the passage of time. Does a year seem shorter to an animal that hibernates for months each winter? Does time seem shorter to an insect than to a giant tortoise because of the difference in their lifetimes? Like many other speculative questions, answers may not be apparent in my lifetime. I have learned to be comfortable with a degree of mystery and the simple acknowledgment that there is much about this universe that I do not understand and will never understand.
According to the usual measurement of people in my part of the world, I will turn 72 this year. Understanding time as linear, with a clear-cut past, present, and future, is helpful for me. At some point, I will reach the end of my life. Since others will live beyond my life while I will no longer have a perception of the past, present, and future, they will continue to exist, at least as observed by those living.
In 2019, our daughter gave birth to our grandson in Japan. Her husband sent us a photograph and a text message. His birthday is July 12, but I received the text message and photograph on July 11 because of the difference in time zones. It was a different day on the other side of the International Date Line. I had fun announcing to my colleagues in the meeting, “My daughter just had a baby tomorrow.” Of course, I knew I was not experiencing some vision of the future; only that time was measured differently in different parts of the world.
Before the 1884 Prime Meridian Conference made time zones official, people had no problem accepting that time would differ in different places. Noon occurred whenever the sun was at its highest in the particular place where one was. It might be noon in one town at a different time than in another. Scheduling railroad service, however, required standardization of time, and standardized time zones became the norm worldwide by the dawning of the 20th century.
While I doubt that I’ll invest much energy in observing the movement of the second hand on the digital watch display I wear on my wrist, there are moments when thinking about time is fascinating and entertaining for me.
The next time someone asks me if I have the time, I think I’ll answer, “Yes, I have the time. Do you want to know what my watch says?” It will only confuse the other person but continue to entertain me.