Wise Words
Wait A Second ! Illusion Of Time
Chongeswar
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** *Wait a Second* ! Illusion of time.** We need to go back in time perhaps very far. To a period when the human species was still in the jungle more precisely, with early hominins and their primary activities were foraging, feeding, and protecting themselves from danger. Survival was of utmost importance. They had no explicit idea of time. You might think they were not very different from animals. In this respect, you would largely be correct. The formation of memory itself took a long time. Only when early humans developed the capacity to register sequences before and after, cause and consequence did the rudiments of temporal awareness emerge. Human beings did not begin with time; they began with change. Changes in nature day and night, seasonal cycles would have prompted a few observant humans to adjust their behavior accordingly.Further down the evolutionary line, as survival activities required less effort due to repetition, skill, and cooperation, humans found themselves with spare time. With more coordinated activities came the perceived need to measure time. Observations of changes in size and angle of shadows cast by trees and objects likely led to the creation of the earliest time-measuring devices. still, All in all, the invention of time measurement roughly 5,000 years ago is strikingly recent when compared to the appearance of hominins (6,000,000 years ago) and formation of the memory in early humans ( 2,500,000 years ago ) anatomically modern humans (~300,000 years ago). For the vast majority of human existence, there were no seconds, minutes, or hours, and yet humans survived, cooperated, migrated, created tools, language, and culture. This alone challenges the intuition that time, as measured and formalized, is fundamental rather than instrumental. Timekeeping appears first as a tool for coordination and control but soon, humans themselves began to be controlled by time. Time is not as fundamental as it projected out to be. It is our lived experience that one hour waiting for a beloved person can feel like a day or may be an eternity, while an entire day of joy and laughter can feel like an hour. Imagine the final few minutes of a football or basketball game- for the winning team, time seems to drag; for the losing team, it appears to race ahead. The same event yet entirely different experiences of time. A few minutes of severe pain feel endless, while hours under anesthesia vanish as though nothing happened. In a state of flow, artists and athletes lose track of time altogether.If one pauses and thinks critically, one soon realizes that time cannot be experienced directly. What we experience is a fleeting moment of now , the present. The past exists as memory; the future as projection. Both occur only in the present. Time is just a concept or idea that appears in existence through agency of human being. *The specious present is all that we directly experience.-William James (Psychologist) in Principles of Psychology* The word illusion comes from the Latin illusio, meaning deception or trickery, derived from illūdō (in + lūdō, to play). Originally, illusion meant to play with, to toy with, or to mislead playfully.Scientifically, an illusion can be defined as: A perceptual or cognitive output that deviates from objective measurement due to internal models, assumptions, or constraints of the observing system Or in simple language, An illusion is something that is not what it appears to be and gives a false impression of reality. Time is a scientific concept or an Idea. Hence, this article will examine and attempts to deconstruct the scientific concept of time by revealing the assumptions and limitations embedded in its measurement.Let us begin with the fundamental unit of time: the second. The SI second is defined as: The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine energy levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.(1). *At first glance, this definition appears absolute ,precise and immutable*. ***A constant.*** still it conveniently does not consider the temperature ,humidity and electromagnetic field.They are the finer matter. A second of same atomic clock will differ on a hill, ground on an underground as altitude differs, depending on the altitude. An atomic clock runs faster at Higher attitude and vice versa. Let me tell you a story There once lived a machinist whose punctuality was the stuff of legend. Never seen without his watch, his days ticked along with mechanical perfection. Every evening, he strode to the base of the towns clock tower and returned home for dinner as if his very steps were gears in a grand cosmic watch. To the townspeople, the tower was the master of time .they set up their watches as per the clock tower. One evening, the towers timekeeper stopped him, grinning with a mix of admiration and mischief. I adjust the town clock by your arrival, he said. You are so precise . The machinist froze. For decades, he had been calibrating his watch to the tower. For a brief, dizzying moment, the universe seemed to wink. Funny, isnt it? Now read the definition of the second again. If you have not chuckled in a High School ,you can do so now. Requirement in definition is to count these many oscillation but for that you need a clock, a counting process at time reference and observer. This creates subtle epistemic loop. Time is defined by counting changes,but counting changes already assumes time.(2) Modern science claims thrives on reproducibility of the experiments and its results. Laboratories worldwide can realize the second by buildingworldwide can clocks under controlled conditions. Hundreds of such clocks exist. But Now you must be wondering - which second is the second? *It Does not matter how ridiculous it sounds* the standard second is agreed upon by comparison and averaging of actually more than 400 atomic clocks , not by reference to a single atom. When labs around the world share atomic readings in they Send signals , they compare counts of cesium oscillations and they adjust their local clocks and all of this takes time. Even this act of a agreeing on NOW is slightly delayed by travel time of signals and processing and average this is coordinated second at best. As it happens with science, it claims a lot. Atomic clocks cannot be synched.(3) One might argue that perfect isolation could solve the problem -no external electric fields ,no external magnetic fields, no motion relative to the observer, no surrounding radiation ,no environmental interaction etc . Good luck with that. But physics does not allow such isolation, even in principle. Any object with temperature above absolute zero ( 0 K) emits blackbody radiation a spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Vacuum chamber walls, Shielding ,Even empty space at finite temperature all radiate photons. These photons interact with the cesium atom and slightly shift its energy levels via electric fields. This produces a blackbody Stark shift. Even if the lab is cryogenic and shielding is perfect by engineering standards.There is still residual thermal radiation unless temperature is exactly 0 K, which is unattainable.(4)Even in shielded environments -Earths magnetic field leaks ,Materials have magnetic domains ,Electronics generate stray fields and Charges fluctuate in conductors etc. So the atom experiences weak electric fields, which causes stark shift and weak magnetic fields causes zeeman shift * and These shifts change the hyperfine splitting frequency ( remember the definition of the a second). Even femto-tesla or micro-volt fields cause measurable effects at modern clock precision. Let dissect further, even Vacuum is not empty. Quantum field theory tells us Fields fluctuate even in vacuum and Virtual photons appear and disappear .These fluctuations interact with atomic states and cause tiny but real energy shifts (e.g. Lamb shift*). moreover, Any motion causes Doppler shift in observed transition frequency .You would have guessed it right. Physicist measure all these shifts, estimate uncertainties and apply correction models. Definitely these Correction is not elimination. The true cesium frequency is never directly observed, only inferred after adjustments.(4) further more ,If Atomic clocks were flown on commercial jets around the world then Compared to stationary clocks, the moving clocks ran slightly slower (or faster, depending on direction). One twin travels at near-light speed in a spaceship; the other stays on Earth. Upon return, the traveling twin is younger. This is not theoretical its confirmed by high-speed particle decay experiments.(5) So if a common seeker like me is not happy with so many flaws, shifts and adjustments how true physicists will. so they may soon gather to agree upon new, more precise and more accurate definition of the a second. Notably a fourth time. * lol. One might be wondering then how a second got such a sacrosanct and halo around it. The words standard, atomic clocks , superfine frequency and a such precise number (9,192,631,770) have weaved their magic and practical human need and indoctrination has done the rest. *There is no absolute time. What we call time is only a convention.-Henri Poincaré (Physicist & Philosopher)(Science and Hypothesis)* If one has travelled from the New York to Singapore or London in efficient and fast flight then one could have experience one of the best jet lag but he has no options but to accept the situation without question because locals were moving and working like any other day as per their clocks. Now if one wants to slow the process the down to avoid jet lag and travelled back by a ship. Now imagine his utter surprise when he witnesses ships clock retarded by one hour as if it is toy and still whole crew agreed to it. Most probably, he could never take any clock seriously in future. So, you would have guessed it right such retard and advance of clocks of ships are carried out in night. If you cross the international dateline sailing from west to east then you have to relive the whole day and you can can have your own Ground Hog Day.(6) *The idea that time is an illusion is deeply rooted in modern physics.-Lee Smolin (Physicist) in Time Reborn* Today, time is discussed across extraordinary scales from the quectosecond (10³ s) to the quettasecond (10³ s =31.7 sextillion years). A remarkable achievement.yet its unit i.e second is slippery, relative ,observer dependent and not constant. Similar to if you try to rest a small object on slightly lighter object on smooth surface both will fall apart. This can be done if use anti-skid mat. The whole point is that time does not have ground to stand on. So many assumptions and corrections required in the fundamental unit of time ,a so called fundamental quantity. more it corrects , more correction it requires. Eventually falls flat in it own weaving. ** * Science worships its precision, even while relativity quietly laughs in corner.*** *The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.-Albert Einstein (Letter to Michele Besso, 1955)* ......................................................................................................................................................................... P.S. 1. Are you still enchanted by your dream of owning a Swiss masterpiece, knowing that it measures time so accurately that physics itself keeps arguing with it? 2. The next time you are late, you can share this article. Not as an excuse as an explanation. :-) For any errors, feedback and suggestions on this article or past articles and for suggestions of topics for the next articles Please mail chaitanya.seeker@gmail.com ........................................................... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/41489667/SI-App2-second.pdf Optical Clocks Started the Calibration of the International Atomic Time https://www.nict.go.jp/en/press/2019/03/04-1.html 2. Epistemic Loop in Logic Epistemic loops in logic refer to situations where the knowledge of an agent about its own knowledge is itself a subject of knowledge. This can lead to circular reasoning, where the truth of the statement "agent A knows that agent A knows that agent A knows that..." is not directly verifiable. Epistemic logic provides a formal framework to analyze and resolve such loops by interpreting the knowledge of agents in a way that does not lead to circularity. University of California, Berkeley pdf or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning 3. Why It's Impossible to Sync Atomic Clocks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRFCYOx61qU If one wants to go deeper then TIME SYNC Paradox by Judah Levine Why Syncing Atomic Clocks is Virtually Impossible | Judah Levine on UTC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc2fLhFlh4g&t=271s 4. absolute zero and various shifts and effects -zeeman effect, stark effect, blackbody radiation and relativistic doppler efffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Doppler_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeman_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark_effect Experimental Evaluation of the Blackbody Radiation Shift in the Cesium Atomic Fountain Clock https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12/1/510 absolute zero and why absolute zero is is not attainable https://medium.com/@_aHnaf_/why-absolute-zero-can-never-be-reached-0393732d889a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_testing_of_time_dilation 6. a beautiful movie https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/groundhog_day