Time

As important as time is to us you might think we had a better understanding of it. I'm not just speaking about time as a measure, an interval with constants that demarcate seconds, minutes, days and so on, but also relativistic time. When we are waiting on something or someone time seems to drag on, while it is over far too soon when we wish it would linger forever.

It is more than a matter of perception, it turns out. Scientists interested in understanding how age changes the way we process time have examined people of various ages engaged in both passive and active activities using realtime brain imaging. What they observed suggests that our sense of time passing is closely correlated with what else is occupying our thoughts. If we are busy, working, solving a puzzle, reading a book, or engaged in any absorbing activity, time seems to move quickly. When we are alone with our thoughts, without distractions, times seems to slow down.

Now I doubt this will come as a surprise to most, nor would anyone argue that as we age we tend to spend more of our dwindling time doing less, and as a consequence time moves at a slower pace. But here's the thing that may seem counter intuitive. As we get older our powers of concentration do not necessarily follow. Some of us gain more focus, while others experience a diminishment. But, if you expected that our sense of time would be governed by the same rules throughout our lives you'd be in for a surprise. Age, it seems affects us all the same way--regardless of how active or passive we may be. Why should this be?

There are many tantalizing but unproven theories. Some scientists believe it is a natural function of brain aging--changes in the way internal communication within our brains work. Others suggest that reduced demands on our sensory, memory and processing capacities leave us --literally with time on our hands. Still others assert a kind of protective aspect--as if the body and brain actually slow down along with our metabolism, and many other bodily functions. No doubt further study will result in some or perhaps all of these concepts being discarded. I say that because for all the advances we've made in our understanding of human biology and physiology, we are not much closer to understanding human consciousness and time, or at least our sense of time, is very much a function of consciousness.

Animals, for example, experience a very different sense of time. Our grand-dog, Lewis, like the rest of his species has a very different circadian clock than humans. His are regulated by light and dark, smell, hunger, and most of all by routines. He has no sense when we are gone if it has been for 15 minutes or 3 hours. But he knows when he is supposed to eat, walk, or nap. He has no watch, no sense of time passing--faster or slower. The same holds true for most animals, although we know that some animals, most notably predators, can process movement and other sensory information very quickly and as such can react with startling speed, as if they are observing the external world in slow motion.

Time is at the center of modern physics and it has always posed a challenge due to its inconsistent nature. More recently, as we have moved from Einsteinian physics to present day Quantum physics reconciling time with general relativity is a significant obstacle. One school of thought has proposed a very radical concept, that time is actually an illusion, a byproduct of quantum entanglement. If you'll forgive a bit of over simplification, time in Quantum theory is fixed, consistent, unidirectional and set apart from the mysterious behavior of quantum matter. But Einstein's relativity theory suggests time can be warped, bent by its interactions with gravity, and slowed down by travel at high speeds. Clearly it cannot be both fixed and mutable, consistent and changeable.

Whether time is indeed a mirage manufactured by the same mysterious forces that govern the interactions of particles at a distance we cannot presently say. But if time is truly an observational construct--not merely a function of our perception it raises an eternal question. Does time flow in only one direction--from past to present? Can it be reversed, or does it flow at all? Perhaps, time is nothing more than a series of un-connected events, quantum engagements that our brains stitch together in order to make sense out of illusion.

I'll end with this thought--but without attribution "the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own." Use it wisely.