Times Arrow

 
In essence, when philosophers debate the nature of the universe, their arguments boil down to whether the universe is dynamic, static, or a combination of each. In other words, does the universe change? Does the universe remain the same? Do some things in the universe stay the same while others change?

A thousand years ago philosophers argued that the universe was mostly static with highly localized places, here and there, where things were changing. Yes it was true that people were born, they lived, and they grew old and died. But that dynamic was changeless. Change in the midst of changelessness. Common sense said look around at the mountains and the seas; do they become something else? The Bible taught the world that all existence was created out of God’s whole cloth in six days and has not changed since creation itself. 

After the scientific revolution began in the 1500’s, it became clear that the opposite appeared to be true. The English scientist Isaac Newton, building on scientific work from the previous 150 years explained that motion was about changing position, location. But according to Newton, motion was more than that. It is only when motion changes that we notice motion. If motion changes speed, either speeding up or slowing down, it becomes noticeable. If motion changes direction, you notice it. In other words, if you accelerate, you notice the acceleration. If you do not accelerate, but you are still moving along at a constant speed in a straight line, you do not notice your motion. We only notice motion when motion changes and change requires time. Motion and time are inseparable because time is embedded both in the motion and in the change in motion. Thus motion and time cannot exist without the other. From Newton forward the big questions facing the deep thinkers of the day were: Which form of motion dominates the universe, constant motion or acceleration? Is it possible to accelerate and not notice it?  If it is possible to accelerate and not notice it, how can we tell the difference between constant motion and acceleration? Since we cannot notice constant motion, does constant motion even exist? For the same reason, does motionlessness exist? In the midst of all this debate, some thinkers divided the universe into the dynamic physical and the static spiritual. In the physical universe change is normal and it is really about motion, and motion is about time. In the spiritual universe everything is changeless, timeless, and eternal. Accordingly, the great philosophical debates over the long centuries are really about time.
 
Despite our cultural and national differences, everyone on earth has time in common. Time dominates our lives. We live a certain amount of time then we die. Does the Arrow of Time continue flying forward in some new form after death or does it fall to the ground? Is there a beginning and an end to time? Eternity is another way of saying time has stopped. Can the Arrow of Time fly in reverse? Can the Arrow of Time change its speed? Can we travel backward in time? Can we travel forward into the future?

Addressing the last two questions, Albert Einstein said no and yes. Around 1900 Einstein decided to take a closer look at Newton’s ideas about time. Newton assumed that time was in constant motion. Time moved at a constant tick-tick-tick never slowing down or speeding up. Tick-tick-tick forever and ever. Einstein thought that time may actually accelerate. We cannot travel to the past because the potential exists for the time traveler to murder a grandparent and thereby destroy the time experiment before it began. That is a paradox that cannot be resolved. Einstein formulated the Twins Paradox which he did resolve:  identical twins agree between themselves that one twin will make a journey into space in a high-speed rocket, flying at nearly the speed of light, while the other remains on Earth.  After seven years of exploring the cosmos, the traveling twin will return home to discover she has aged less than her identical twin who has aged 60 years! Time travel to the future was possible! For Einstein, time was not absolute as Newton believed, but relative to the speed the observer was traveling. Laboratory experimentation and the observed behavior of cosmic rays confirmed that the consistent tick-tick-tick of time slows down as speed increases until time slows to a crawl as you near the speed of light.

Although it may not be possible to physically travel back in time, it is possible to observe the past from a safe distance. As astronomers look deeper into the distant reaches of our universe, they are also looking back in time. Telescopes are actually time machines that look into the past. Two hundred years ago another paradox came to light. Olbert’s Paradox stated that there is an inconsistency between the observation that the night sky is dark and the observation that there are more stars than grains of sand on all of earth’s beaches. If the universe is infinitely old, it was reasoned, star light from so many stars should bathe our night sky in a glare of light brighter than daylight. Olbert resolved the paradox logically by showing that the universe is not infinitely old and therefore the light moving from more distant stars has not had enough time to reach earth. The best observational data today tells us the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and the universe is expanding in all directions. Not only is the universe expanding in all directions but the expansion is accelerating. Extrapolating backward in time to the distant past, the universe was a much smaller place than it is today. Modern cosmology seems to have answered some of the big questions of philosophy. Neither constant motion nor motionlessness exists. Everything in the universe is accelerating all the time even if that acceleration is not noticed. More profoundly, change is the normal state of the entire universe.

Everything is changing all of the time everywhere in the universe including here in the United States of America. So the question is what kind of change do we want? Who should benefit from change? Who should sacrifice for change? Which direction should that change go? How can we influence change?

This blog site is my small attempt to influence the Arrow of Time. If I can nudge the Arrow, accelerate the Arrow, into another direction, a direction that leads to real peace instead of perpetual war, real freedom as opposed to the constitutional fraud most of the world lives under, and needs satisfied instead of poverty generalized, great! The problem though is the Arrow of Time is far too big for one person to change its direction. If, on the other hand, many, many hands nudge it, the Arrow of Time will accelerate away from injustice, war, exploitation, and hate and in the direction of socialism.
 


December 2009