Time and Gravity. The Winner Is….??
The Measurement of “Time”: Here is another view which shows “Time” is a man made concept and the past and the future are just very slightly changed (energy) versions of our current position in space which we understand as our “Now”
We have all grown up and, over our formative years, we have understood the measurement of “Time”. However, “Time” flies, so the saying goes, so not to many young people or the older generation give much thought to it. We understand that “Time” is shown on our watches, on our smart phones, on TV, on station clocks and we have day and night to prompt us whether we are in a before noon, or after noon, mode.
However, if we take all that we know about “Time” and remove some of the understandings we may come to another conclusion. Let us make some very big assumption, as follows, on the basis that our universe did not develop as it did. Let us assume:-
a) The Earth does not rotate
b) The Moon does not exist
c) The Sun does not exist
d) The Planets do not exist except Earth
e) The Earth’s trajectory is in a curving line (a straight line in the short term) through space,
f) However, life has developed on earth notwithstanding these huge assumptions.
As life developed and humans started to look around, with radar for eyesight, there would be no day and night, there would be no shadow and therefore no sun dials. There would not be the opportunity to divide the 360 degree rotation of the earth into a convenient 24 sectors and give each sector a number between 1 and 24. There would not be a cycle around the sun to give a start and end to a cycle i.e. how long is a piece of string.
However, life being full of challenges, a man and woman would see that the man going from the next cave to another, over the hill and back, led to conflict in the cave, as the man had been out of sight and doing what men do whilst the woman was cooking. There were no watches, no clocks, indeed no measurement of the distance between events.
As the Earth sped through space, in an African village, a man climbed to the top of a tall palm tree and cut a palm nut from the tree. He dropped the nut and at the same moment his knife fell out of his hand. The nut and the knife fell to the ground watched by his woman. Later the woman remarked about the two items hitting the ground at exactly the same moment. They discussed this and decided to try an experiment, later, after they had slept.
The Experiment – The Interface Of Gravity And “Time” Seen As A Measurement Of Distance
When they awoke they collected stones of different sizes and hauled them to the top of the palm tree. The man then dropped two stones, of different sizes, at the same moment and both the man and the woman agreed the stones hit the ground at the same instant.
The man had many stones, maybe 50, at the top of the tree for the experiment. By chance, the man at the next cave came out of his cave and started to walk to the stream, which was 100 paces from his cave entrance and as the man started to walk to the stream the man at the top of the Palm tree dropped a stone. The instant the falling stone hit the ground the man dropped a second stone and he continued to drop stones in a similar way until the other man had reached the stream.
The man at the top of the tree climbed down and looked at all the stones on the ground and then looked at the neighbours cave entrance and then at the man at the stream. He realised he had made a measurement of some description.
The Palm tree was 32 ft. tall and the distance from the cave to the steam was 100 paces which he thought was about 300 ft. He calculated that for each stone dropped the walking man had moved towards the stream a distance of about 7ft.
After sleeping again he come to the conclusion that for every tree length travelled by a stone the walking man had covered a distance of 7 ft. Therefore 7 ft. (horizontal) per tree length (vertical) was a relationship which he needed time to consider.
After several experiments of a similar nature he came to the conclusion that feet travelled by the walker per “Time” taken by a stone to fall to the ground was a discovery as this later became known to us all as “Miles per Hour”. But he had yet he had to determine what the period (length) taken for the falling stone represented
His next action was to make up a new name for this length which after the village elders agreed would be called a “second”. This fits in nicely with 32ft per second per second the acceleration due to gravity.
Under the assumptions made, the only constant that could be observed would be the effect of gravity. But this would be for planet Earth. Should another alien race be on a much larger planet and, under the same assumption, their xx ft. per tree length speed would not be the same, as the effect of gravity at another planet would be different. Accordingly, the acceleration due to gravity on the alien planet would give them a different “second”. As other alien planets evolved their own developed “seconds” would be of specific length and therefore any measurement of “time” would vary according to the gravity forces local to the observer.
Accordingly, we can use our understanding of “Time” as a convenient way of organising our daily lives but if we need to meet up with aliens for a meeting at their local pub, we need to know their gravitational factors.
All the above is trying to show that “Time”, as we understand it, is simply a convenient of measuring the “distance” between events and the events are relative to Earth as the base point.
The conclusion is that there is no such thing as “Time” which fits across the universe (is Universal) and in physics all made calculations are completed with “Time” not figuring in any of the conclusions. “Time” has been absorbed into our culture as a convenient way of organising our lives but it can be replaced with a distance travelled or radians travelled whilst considering the gravitational forces local to the point of consideration. Such points of consideration could be on Planet Earth, on Mars or within a system of another star.
We have, at a very instant in the journey of planet Earth a “Now” and in our “nano-seconds” before we had a “Now” and in our “nano-seconds”in the future we have a “Now”. The question is do we need to have a past “Now” or a future “Now” when we cannot handle how our immediate “Now” fits into our universal understanding. A second question. Do we need to have stored past “Now” and do we need to have immediate access to future “Now” apart from the immediate “Now” following the “Now” we are experiencing??
These questions may be considered irrelevant to our lives and to science. However, these disturbing questions are in the minds of many distinguished people who are wrestling with where science has led us with respect to “Time”.
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