This is going to sound like the ravings of a mad man. The book I just read, Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, would kind of predict that though, right? Einstein must have sounded like a lunatic when he suggested that time runs differently for different people depending on their context.
As the saying goes, Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. The thing is, everything does happen all at once. It's only our observations that link these tings together. I will suggest, and I'm sure that it has already been suggested, is what differentiates the past from the future is that in the future we can predict with greater probability what will happen in the next future instant.
I once had the thought that if we could effectively fly all over the universe and make observations at the speed of light, time would essentially be meaningless. We could observe the the position, speed, and vector of every molecule, every atom, every subatomic particle, and from there extrapolate where they would be in the next instance and the next after that. We could build out a model of where every little molecule would be in the very next moment and what effect that would have on all the molecules around it at any given instance. Once we built out that model we could move back and forth through it, back and forth through time, over and over wherever we wanted to be at whatever moment. Then Mr. Heisenberg came into the mix.
Heisenberg, besides producing the finest meth that New Mexico has to offer, said that we couldn't predict with certainty the position and momentum of physical particles. Throw Mr. Schrödinger's cat into the mix and what it comes down to is that we can only say where those particles are or are going with some level of probability. So our reality is really only a hazy cloud of electrons and photons and quarks that we accept as solid because subsequent observations lead us to some probability that you and I exist and this keyboard I'm typing with is a solid structure of plastic molecules.
I learned today that probability is the reason that heat moves from warmer things to cooler things rather than vice-versa. It took me a moment to understand what Rovelli was talking about, but imagine this: you have a 20-degree rock and surround it with an equal mass of 80-degree water. (In a closed system, so disregard heat loss to the air, etc.) Within a given amount of time we would expect the rock to heat to 50 degrees and the water to cool to that temperature. Why doesn't the water heat to 100 degrees and the rock cool to 0 degrees? It has to do with probability. It IS possible for the second effect to occur, just really, really, REALLY unlikely. It is far more likely that the excited molecules of water will have their energy dissipate to the atoms of the cool rock rather than the rock's atom's transferring additional momentum to the water's. And that dissipation of heat and energy is how we see the flow of time. Probability leads us along a certain path rather than back.
Another thought occurs to me that because we are actually conscious of how time flows, we can change the universe, change the probability of the next moment just with a thought. Or maybe I can't. Maybe there is no multiverse, just this single universe and no matter what happens, I am fated to think and act a certain way no matter what. I hate the thought of that. In the larger scheme of things, I suppose that doesn't really matter.
Rovelli's book, along with Hawking's assertion that information isn't actually destroyed by a black hole counteracts the meaninglessness I felt after reading The Road. Surely you are thinking that I am truly straddling the border of real lunacy now. I can't explain it any more now than I could explain the utter void I felt after reading The Road. I know that none of this means anything. Me writing this only means as much weight as I personally give to it. In the larger scheme of things these words are utterly meaningless. In the utter scheme of things, however, finding a cure for cancer is only slightly more meaningful. We'll need a new way of thinking, of thinking about ourselves and our places in the surrounding universe, else we all will truly go mad.
There are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy and approximately 100 billion galaxies in the known universe. That means there are literally at least 10 billion-trillion stars that we know about. we are tiny specks of dust within tiny specks of dust. But maybe we can change the universe with a thought?
Update: They did this cool little succinct website in conjunction with Rovelli's book: http://www.sevenbrieflessons.com/.
As the saying goes, Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. The thing is, everything does happen all at once. It's only our observations that link these tings together. I will suggest, and I'm sure that it has already been suggested, is what differentiates the past from the future is that in the future we can predict with greater probability what will happen in the next future instant.
I once had the thought that if we could effectively fly all over the universe and make observations at the speed of light, time would essentially be meaningless. We could observe the the position, speed, and vector of every molecule, every atom, every subatomic particle, and from there extrapolate where they would be in the next instance and the next after that. We could build out a model of where every little molecule would be in the very next moment and what effect that would have on all the molecules around it at any given instance. Once we built out that model we could move back and forth through it, back and forth through time, over and over wherever we wanted to be at whatever moment. Then Mr. Heisenberg came into the mix.
Heisenberg, besides producing the finest meth that New Mexico has to offer, said that we couldn't predict with certainty the position and momentum of physical particles. Throw Mr. Schrödinger's cat into the mix and what it comes down to is that we can only say where those particles are or are going with some level of probability. So our reality is really only a hazy cloud of electrons and photons and quarks that we accept as solid because subsequent observations lead us to some probability that you and I exist and this keyboard I'm typing with is a solid structure of plastic molecules.
I learned today that probability is the reason that heat moves from warmer things to cooler things rather than vice-versa. It took me a moment to understand what Rovelli was talking about, but imagine this: you have a 20-degree rock and surround it with an equal mass of 80-degree water. (In a closed system, so disregard heat loss to the air, etc.) Within a given amount of time we would expect the rock to heat to 50 degrees and the water to cool to that temperature. Why doesn't the water heat to 100 degrees and the rock cool to 0 degrees? It has to do with probability. It IS possible for the second effect to occur, just really, really, REALLY unlikely. It is far more likely that the excited molecules of water will have their energy dissipate to the atoms of the cool rock rather than the rock's atom's transferring additional momentum to the water's. And that dissipation of heat and energy is how we see the flow of time. Probability leads us along a certain path rather than back.
Another thought occurs to me that because we are actually conscious of how time flows, we can change the universe, change the probability of the next moment just with a thought. Or maybe I can't. Maybe there is no multiverse, just this single universe and no matter what happens, I am fated to think and act a certain way no matter what. I hate the thought of that. In the larger scheme of things, I suppose that doesn't really matter.
Rovelli's book, along with Hawking's assertion that information isn't actually destroyed by a black hole counteracts the meaninglessness I felt after reading The Road. Surely you are thinking that I am truly straddling the border of real lunacy now. I can't explain it any more now than I could explain the utter void I felt after reading The Road. I know that none of this means anything. Me writing this only means as much weight as I personally give to it. In the larger scheme of things these words are utterly meaningless. In the utter scheme of things, however, finding a cure for cancer is only slightly more meaningful. We'll need a new way of thinking, of thinking about ourselves and our places in the surrounding universe, else we all will truly go mad.
There are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy and approximately 100 billion galaxies in the known universe. That means there are literally at least 10 billion-trillion stars that we know about. we are tiny specks of dust within tiny specks of dust. But maybe we can change the universe with a thought?
Update: They did this cool little succinct website in conjunction with Rovelli's book: http://www.sevenbrieflessons.com/.
