Time. On the surface the concept is relatively simple. For most, it is in large, just a measuring system used to sequence events. Hardly captivating but the concept of time is an area that has always fascinated me.
If I could have one answer to any question, it wouldn’t be the answer to how life began, nor what, if anything occurs after death. It wouldn’t even be if Tony Hibbert will ever score. These questions have never interested me, mainly because I largely suspect the answers to be fairly predictable and hardly awe inspiring. Thats right, I'm saying the origin of life is boring.
If I was allowed one definite answer to any question, it would certainly be on time. What is time? Is it as simple as the definition given above? What causes time? Is time an emergent concept? What is the definite answer for why time slows in gravity and motion? Is time a dimension?
I’m determined to keep this as short as possible. I’ve bored too many people to death on the topic but consider the following;
You have a torch. You turn it on and point the light to the night sky. The beam of light that leaves the torch does so at the speed of 186,000 miles a second (the speed of light). The distance that beam would travel over a year is what’s known as a light year.
469 light years away is a star known as WASP-2. Lets say your sat on this star with a telescope powerful enough to look back on Earth. If you looked through this telescope you wouldn’t see the earth as it is now, but as it was in Tudor times. If you where further away, say in the constellation of scorpius 20,000 light years away, you would see the Earth during the Ice age.
An explanation can be provided for the above that isn't necessarily attributed to time, but the example illustrates for me that time can be manipulated. Most will disagree and probably rightly so, but for me - time isn't set in stone.
Still awake? What do you all think?
