Since the topic of time in being dicussed here I’ll offer it here first as a strawman to pick apart. My wording is purposeful as my intent as usual is so a child can understand.
Alpha & Omega, A condensed and inspiring peek into astrophysics.
TLDR; A nice quick version is traveling at the speed of light, space and time both fully collapse. Only us slow-moving turtles see a beginning and ending, here or there as separate.
If enticed, the following is offered in hope of removing some of the confusion between thousands and billions of years passing. It’s both. And a proposal that may eloquently unite quantum and cosmological gravity that can be falsified.
First I should note brevity and slight liberties are used to help introduce and visualize ideas, then build a clearer larger picture from what we see. This is also a hobby as I refer to Einstein’s equations for his proofs, I like the pictures. grin
Let’s look at what we know.
- We have recently measured that the universe is not only expanding, it is accelerating.
- We design clocks in our satellites to run slower so they will tick at the same rate as ours.
Let’s unpack those before adding anything new.
Einstein shows us that space and time are two sides of the same coin, they are not separate but are parts of the same thing. If we express both space and time together we are speaking of constant motion, speed, as in kilometers in space per hour in time, or miles per hour and feet per second as more examples.
For our satellite clocks; Einstein also shows us how accelerating to high speeds causes space and time to get shorter for the traveler. To others, even our rocket looks shorter and our seconds are shorter than theirs. We slow the clocks down on our satellites so their shorter seconds don’t tick faster than ours.
cite.
Simply, how long a second is depends on how fast we are going. Even traveling slightly faster than one another our clocks will eventually become out of sync.
Did we have difficulty imagining how light passes us at the same speed, no matter how fast we are going? We are shorter.
For a simple visual analogy, let’s say light travels a foot a second so we can watch it move, and it so happens both your feet, fortunately, measure one foot in length. Mine too, we’re twins. So it takes one second for the light at the back of our heel to reach the tip of our toe. And… we agree, it took that long.
So you now jump in your rocket and you pass me so that the light hits our heel at the same time.
When the light reached your tow, you check your watch and report; “Yes, one foot a second”.
But I say; "Wait a minute here, you look a bit squished. Your foot is only half the size of mine. For me, the light has only traveled half a foot in half a second. We measure the same speed because your space and seconds are physically shorter than mine.
I incorrectly stated it this way to easily visualize the basic idea of shrinkage before I add that you moving and my prior example is not complete yet. In reality, I will see my second pass before you.
I am the first one to say “Yes, one foot a second” because you are still speeding along. Even though the tick of your second is shorter and your foot is shorter, your toe is ahead of mine when the light hits my toe. I’m first.
When you claim one second has passed, I will see the light having traveled two feet in two seconds. And you will have lived only one second of life within my two. At the same time. Even though we are twins, you will return younger than I am.
Now that we are a little more comfortable about shrinking space and time together, the opposite occurs when we slow down. Space and time expand again. The universe looks bigger already.
So let go back to our expanding universe and ask; Is the universe really expanding or are we slowing down and it just seems like it? It’s both, or more accurately, the same thing. If we were instead traveling at the same speed as the expansion, our measurements would say the size of our universe is static, with no change. Any faster and the universe would begin to shrink and we gather predictions and theories of an eminent big crunch. [inside joke]
But for us on earth, we see the universe as expanding and our seconds are getting longer. As well as the Planck constant. A second back then was much shorter when we add in the exponential curve of acceleration, and seconds were even shorter before then. There should in fact be a historic point in time having a ratio of a thousand years passing within our day. And if you take the length of every year in between, laid out end to end, short to long…
Dinosaurs were not that long ago.
Yes that many clock ticks have passed as carbon dating suggests but clocks tick faster and faster as we go back in time. Even the years start to pack together, the further back in history we go.
Below is a simplified comparison of six billion recorded years occurring within our perceived four billion fixed-length years.
The first is a simple linear scale of equal length years as we perceive time passing.
0
|-----|-----|-----|-----| ← perceived 4 billion years passing
The next scale is a sample of 5 billion years passing in an expanding universe, time expands.
||-|–|—|----|-----| ← actual time having passed
A proper logarithmic scale would include the acceleration rate of our expansion.
Now we can ask an odd question. Is God waiting for our prophesied end?
A key we learned is we don’t have to go back in time to find shorter time lengths, we have a rocket. As we accelerate faster and faster, space and time are getting smaller and smaller. Thankfully we are also shrinking in proportion so as not to get overly tight in here. We don’t even sense we are shrinking as everything else is shrinking proportionally with us.
For reasons I’ll skip, along with new FTL theories, in claiming as Einstein did that the fastest we can travel ‘through space’ is the speed of light. Once we reach the speed of light; both space and time have fully collapsed. In essence, all there’s are here so it takes no time to go anywhere.
And our clock was running so fast in the last few seconds that we made it to the end of time, in no time. But our rocket did not get us to the proverbial end of time faster than anyone else. For them, years had passed and we arrive at the same time. For them, space is way out there and they see us still zooming away year after year. The difference is how much time we experienced.
Generations will have passed within our final second.
At the speed of light, we are now where all things begin and end. The proverbial Alpha and Omega. At the speed of light, there are no divisions to distinguish. If we try to imagine it, as if using our senses, we can’t. There is nothing separate from us to reference, there is no there, no beginnings. Only us slow-moving turtles see a beginning and end as separate.
And fortunately, there is No Waiting.
The following link is a nice video by famed scientist Brian Greene explaining the Block Universe theory with some nice graphics to go along with my story but leaves out the expanding universe pieces for simplicity (or He hasn’t realized it yet, grin). The video also provides additional references.
video.
Is this not also predestination?
- That is a very controversial topic so I do ask to discuss under a new post, wink, and I may share a couple thoughts there.
For one, the book also says the heavens and earth are eventually rolled up and there will be a new heaven and earth. Perhaps one without a need for predestination.
And with that, I’ll just say “God help me”, be merciful, I’m not insistent. grin.
Let me know if you found this helpful, or at least understandable. thanks