Tuesday 30 September 2014

What is Time . . . . A Simple Guide to the Origin of Time



I not sure about you lot but in this part of the world it is getting distinctly darker earlier in the evening meaning that summer is over and Autumn has arrived. As it happened today was a nice sunny day and the fact it is just after seven o’clock in the evening as I write this (I will be eating my evening meal soon so bear that in mind)  and getting darker by the second shows us that the year is rapidly vanishing into winter.

And this made me think about time, yes this really is a Big Question today, although it’s not as complex as you might think.  You see if you think about what mankind has used as its reference of time over history.  Starting with rising of the sun and the summer and winter solstice, which is why many of the old sacred sights such as Stonehenge are large clocks aligned to these events. Of course things have moved on and we now have time based on the caesium atom which is seriously accurate, you will never be late for meeting using a continuous cold caesium fountain atomic clock.

However all these clocks sort of miss the key issue involved in time, they all are based on moving things even if these days it’s tiny really really tiny. So the point is TIME can only exist while things move, even if the things moving are tiny like atoms or electrons.  In other words time does not exist it is merely a way of expressing movement from point A to Point B.  Remember the Big Bang theory says before the Big Bang time did not exist (I’m not making this up) and that is because nothing moved not even atoms. But even the tiniest movement of a single electron (or Chicken) would create (time - movement) and the Universe all in one huge explosion.

Which brings us to chickens they understand time better than you think; what is one of the earliest forms of measuring a fixed time . . . .? The Egg Timer . . .  a device entirely evolved by chickens. And that old saying which folk can't ever answer. . . . Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road. . . . It was a way of travelling a fixed distance to access the accuracy of the egg timer, allowing the calculation of the horizontal movement of the chicken at a fixed speed against the gravitational forces on the egg timer.  It is a little known fact that chickens were the first creatures to attempt time travel. . . . OK YES they were rubbish at it but they tried.  


I may be up for yet another Nobel Prize again. . . . 

7 comments:

  1. Wow! I actually understood something that was all sciencey. There may be hope for me yet...ok, maybe not.

    That last paragraph made me laugh, because I could just imagine being in a pub and cracking the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road? Because It was a way of travelling a fixed distance to access the accuracy of the egg timer, etc etc.

    The look on my friend's faces would be priceless...if I had any friends.

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    1. Yes I need to write down this answer to Why did the Chicken cross the road, I feel it has scope to confused folk, it is the sort of thing that Bill Bailey would say and I like him.

      I avoided some of the tricky stuff involved in the concept of time as purely movement. But maybe I should write a bit more about it.

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  2. Rob, I was confused, did you mean "assess" ?

    No Bell Prize in deed.

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    1. You are right Mr ESB I am a better scientist than I am a typist, and many would question my scientific abilities and say I am mad so typing is not high on my skills list.

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    2. Perhaps if you wanted to be more authentic looking in regards to time discussions and physic, you should be in a wheelchair and sound like Steven Hawkings. Perhaps a slight twist on the name too, go with Rob Z Chickenings, which of course drunk people discussing your theories might start caLLing you Rob Z Chickenwings, which would interfere with pure science.

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  3. So is it possible to travel to the past by walking backwards?

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    1. Sadly Mr H you could only travel backwards in time if all physical matter travelled backwards. You see if only you are the relationship between you and everything else is new and so is effectively still moving forwards.

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