By Benjamin Carlson
Ahh, time. That great thing which envelopes all that we know and confuses everybody who tries to quantify and describe it at its most base nature.
Sure, Google defines a second as “the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom,” but that simply states time as our method of describing a concept which we’ve pretty much invented.
Oooh, It’s all bendy.
It’s confusing because time is really only one half of the story. Its complete nature is a concept known as space-time, a dimension that is completely misused and misunderstood in our everyday lives but also sounds cool enough to where we can use it to sound more intelligent than we really are. Other words that fit in this category are “quantum” (I’ve been getting into this quantum healing stuff, man…it’s really rad), “gluten” (I think I’m gluten-intolerant…I just hate how eggs taste), and “inconceivable” (You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means).
When buying your Wednesday Weed from your buddy, you don’t say “Hey, let’s meet at the Walmart,” and neither do you say, “let’s meet at 2:14 a.m.” You would say, “Bro, lets meet at Walmart at 2:14 a.m.,” thus signifying both a time and a place to meet. That is why scientists sometimes find it more helpful to talk about “space-time” instead of simply time or space.
“Hey, if this is the true nature of time, why isn’t it taught this way from the start?” Good question and I am glad you asked. The answer has something to do with the high-nosed society of physicists and a little to do with the fact that is more helpful to think of it that way when talking about relativity and not when talking about simpler concepts such as projectile motion. Einstein’s special theory of relativity is what I’m talking about here. This theory is so special and important it is actually called a “special theory.” I don’t know if you find that funny, but I at least get a little chuckle out of that one. You’re probably a Communist if you don’t.
His theory of relativity basically deals with two simple ideas: 1) For inertial reference frames (i.e. points of view that are moving at a constant speed), the laws of physics do not change, and 2) the speed of light is constant for all reference frames (the speed of light is the “speed-limit” of the universe). There are some pretty profound implications of this and some of them are not even realized today, almost 110 years later.
One of these implications is that time flows forward. Not backwards, sideways or upside-down—but forward. If there are any future movie producers and/or directors reading this, please make a note of this because travelling back in time makes no sense whatsoever and I can’t count how many movies violate this simple rule of physics. Forward time travel, yes. None of this Back to the Future crap. Yeah, we’d all like a DeLorean and a hover-board in our backyard, but according to what we know about the laws of physics, backwards time travel is not going to ever happen unless we can somehow get outside our space-time continuum. Which, as physical beings whose bodies have time clocks and whatnot, would kill us. Forward time-travel is in fact possible once we start creating spaceships that can travel near the speed of light because time essentially slows down the closer you get to the speed of light.
This actually makes substantially more sense than the Anakin/Padme relationship.
If you’re the one in the spaceship time flows normally for you, but for everyone else looking at you flying near the speed of light, time appears to be slowing down. Here’s a scenario: You are futuristic gangster picking up some product in a far away galaxy (some dark energy or some other illegal goods). Before you leave your home planet, you had better make sure you say goodbye to your wife and kids because when you get back in 24 hours according to you, they will be long dead and you’ll meet your great great (probably a lot of greats) grandchildren who might even be older than you. So maybe that weird age-gap difference between Anakin and Padme wouldn’t have been so uncomfortable because Anakin was space-travelling a lot more than Padme? I don’t know, but it’s still unsettling nonetheless.
If none of this makes sense to you, don’t worry. Even people who claim to know this stuff have trouble with some aspect about special relativity. Einstein even knew there was something missing because there were some experimental phenomena that his special theory of relativity could not explain. Quantum physics is exploring some of these phenomena and hopefully will find the answers, but in the meantime we will have to be satisfied with eating our Cheetos and watching Futurama.
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