Jiya Kohar Week 12: 100 Years = 5 Minutes
Human civilization always treats time as sacred and meaningful. A lifetime is long, a century can seem infinite. Living a long life is important, waiting a long time matters. Time is such a significant aspect of human life and almost everything we place value on is tied to how much time has passed like memory, growth, and even (POAS!) legacies. But, time is not consistent across the universe.
According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time stretches or compresses depending on how fast you move or how strong gravity is around you, also known as time dilation. If someone were to move close to the speed of light, or spend time somewhere with very strong gravity, like near a massive planet or black hole, the amount of time they personally experience becomes much different than the amount of time experienced somewhere else, like on Earth. Though their life happens at a completely normal pace from their perspective, when they return and compare it with someone who stayed on Earth, they might find that a lot more time has passed for the other person. For example, an astronaut might experience only five years while decades pass on Earth. Though both people lived normally, from their perspective, they experienced two completely different amounts of time. So, time is not universally experienced and depends on your path through space and gravity.
Doesn’t it blow your mind that, at the rate of scientific advancement, time travel to the future is definitely possible?! Someone could leave and return to a future they never lived through, which could hypothetically lead to all sorts of science fiction theories coming to life. Initially, thinking about this led me into a spiral. Humans, or at least I, tend to treat time as a universal truth. A lifetime is the entire span of my existence and a century is a block of history. However, time dilation shows the opposite.
I used to comfort myself with the idea that even if humans are such an insignificant speck in the universe, at least we have the experience of time, but that isn’t guaranteed either. Even something as big as a century could be a couple of irrelevant moments to someone else. In the time it took me to live my life, from birth to death, someone else could live through it in a short nap.
At first, this felt unsettling, but I realized that it doesn’t change my opinions of the purpose of life. If our lives truly have no significance, considering the vastness of the universe and the fact that, after all, we are just specks of sand on a floating rock, we also have the ability to create our own meaning. In a way, the curse of insignificance is also a blessing. What a privilege it is to be in a position where you can derive your own purpose and experience everything, good and bad, that makes one human. Language and perspective allow one to shape their own meaning and purpose.
Hi Jiya! I’ve heard of this theory of relativity, but never really tried to fully understand it, so your explanation made everything seem surprisingly simple. Like what do you mean five years here is not five years somewhere else? Time isn’t static…? What! I read a bit of the article and although I still can't comprehend much of photons and time dilation, it’s definitely exciting that humanity is gradually grasping the intricacies of the universe.
ReplyDeleteAh…humans and our unending desire for seeking out the purpose in life. Pondering about why we exist is always fun, but I’m glad to just exist. The part of your blog about our insignificance in the greater universe reminds me about this tendency for people to invalidate their own experiences when comparing them to something of a “grander scale.” In the context of the universe, it wouldn’t matter if I suddenly exploded into smithereens. The Earth would continue to spin, stars would continue to die and be reborn, and the universe would continue to function just as it did 5 seconds ago. But to all my companions, their current worldview isn’t the wide expanses of the galaxy, and so my sudden explosion would make a difference. Someone’s existence isn’t just negligible because they can’t influence billions of people or even the cosmos.
Hi Jiya, your blog this week was a really interesting read. Time as a concept is one of the most fascinating things and it’s really funny because we had a physics professor come and talk about black holes and time dilation last week. Whenever I think of time dilation or time travel and how time is warped across realities and space I always think of Interstellar. Not only is it one of the greatest movies of all time, but it accurately represents time travel and its effects. Yes there will be a future where we are able to travel through time, it is no longer a question of if, but when. I think that Time Travel provides us with an interesting dilemma. Humanity stands to gain a lot from time travel, but this is not the time travel denoted in popular movies where you can return to a present that existed seconds after you left, you return to a reality completely foreign to the one you left. If anything it makes people realize the finiteness of time. The parallel you drew between how a century feels to you before understanding time dilation vs after really connected with me. In the office there is a famous line that is said by one of the characters and he says “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before they’re the good old days” and that really hits. As endless as our time seems, the age old saying of “time flies” cannot be more true. The only question I have with time dilation is are we traveling to the future or are we just waiting for the future to come in a place where time doesn’t exist in the same parameters. I think the largest lesson to take away from the possibility of time travel and the understanding of the finiteness of time is that we should cherish every moment because in the grand scheme of things, we are just a blip in the long history of time.
ReplyDeleteHi Jiya!
ReplyDeleteThis blog made me think of the movie Interstellar, as the astronauts who travel to the new planet in the movie were gone for around 20-odd years, but to them it just felt like a couple of hours. Time is an extremely confusing and weird thing to think about. I mean, how come time seems to go by faster as you age, and how come time is relative based on how much gravity you experience? This concept of time is something that I don’t believe will ever get fully answered in our lifetime, but hey, why don’t we stand near a black hole, wait for an hour, come back, and then see if the question has been answered?
I mean, for me at least, time seems to be going by fast. We are all going to go to college in about a year and a half, but it seems like I was just a freshman five minutes ago. Why does time, as a human construct, even exist? Because if you think about it, we could just place any random rules about time, and if enough people follow it, it becomes true. How does that even work?
Your view of humans and our lives being insignificant in the grand scheme of things is something that I resonate with. I mean, take Einstein for example, some other human-like species on another planet definitely has no idea who he is, they are probably abiding by their own rules about time. Their minute is one hundred seconds, an hour is one hundred minutes. Do minutes even exist on Planet X?
What I am saying is that, while I agree with your point of view, to me this idea simply means to live your life the way that you want to. I am so insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe so it doesn’t really matter if I decide that I am a terrible student or a terrible person. At the end of the day, who cares? Another great read!
Hi, Jiya! I really liked your blog this week, and I found your interpretation of the theory of relativity really interesting! I never interpreted it as a way of saying that our time spent on this Earth is insignificant. I also find your interpretation of the meaning of life fascinating, too! I think it’s a good outlook on life, trying to live it to the fullest.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there’s one aspect of me that’s going to say that your look on life is too grand. We live on this tiny little rock floating in the middle of emptiness, why not just try to do the greatest thing you can on this little rock? We have attached so much importance to wealth and fame, if in the end it doesn’t really mean anything, what’s stopping us from doing everything we can to try and achieve something like that? If we truly wanted to live life to the fullest, we should try to get as much money as we can. As they (it’s mainly just me) say, “money can’t buy you happiness, but it buys the things that make you happy. After all, our time on this Earth is fleeting, and we’re here to make as much of an impact as possible.