Time's Arrow Arrested
Dusky shadows hide under the leafy boughs of the lanky trees.
Beyond the dark sky the sun carries the bright promise of
a lustrous morning. But it is merely a promise. For, the experience
of the past is not evidence of future events.
And how perturbing can be the obvious. This ever present and
precisely dissected substance that we break to exact hours,
minutes and seconds, and call it time. How mind-boggling is
this historian’s palette, Newton’s infinite attribute, Einstein’s finite
fourth dimension.
Astronomers say that a colossal firecracker called the Big Bang
exploded about fifteen billion years ago, marking the beginning
of time and the universe. Yet this sophisticated modern myth
does not really solve the enigma of time or the mystery of existence.
After all, why does the world exist, rather than not?
Newton viewed time as a mathematical duration, an absolute
temporal dimension in which time flows steadily without relation
to space, matter or human affairs. Many years later, Einstein
dropped the notion of absolute space and time. In the Theory
of Relativity he demonstrated that time slows down as velocity
increases. Clocks can run at different speeds.
Time became the fourth dimension. However, in the tiny world
of the atoms, quantum physicists discover a bizarre universe of
eleven dimensions. In Superstring theories higher dimensions are
curled up within the deep structure of space-time. Moreover,
the number of higher cosmic dimensions is not limited, because
scientists might invent as many dimensions as it takes for their
theories to work. Unfortunately, in relation to nature mathematical
propositions are uncertain.
Physicists nowadays conceive time as an asymmetrical arrow,
flying in one direction, from the past to the future, through
the present. They devise ingenious schemes to ride on the arrow
of time into the future; or to reverse its direction of flight and travel
back to the past.
I believe that time is an illusion. It does not really exists. The hands
of the clock does not really show us time but movement in space,
an artificial human invention of hours, minutes and seconds. And
what we measure with our objective instruments is not identical
with the subjective psychological experience of duration. External
time and internal time are not the same.
Now, if time really flows like a river without banks,
if it is indeed in a state of flux, then what is its speed? And since
we measure speed by the ratio of traveling distance to the periodic
motion of the clock, how are we supposed to measure the
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poem by Paul Hartal
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