I have a short attention span. When I was a kid, I used to entertain myself by reading encyclopedias. When I'm bored its fun just learning things quickly and in short spurts. Now I entertain myself by asking google just about anything.
I was thinking about “time” this morning, the concept of time, that is. I googled “time” and here are some of the things that came up.
How old is concept of time?
Artifacts from the Paleolithic suggest that the moon was used to reckon time as early as 6,000 years ago. Lunar calendars were among the first to appear, with years of either 12 or 13 lunar months (either 354 or 384 days).
Who created the time?
The Egyptians broke the period from sunrise to sunset into twelve equal parts, giving us the forerunner of today's hours. As a result, the Egyptian hour was not a constant length of time, as is the case today; rather, as one-twelfth of the daylight period, it varied with length of the day, and hence with the seasons.
About time - Mathematical Association of America
Is time an illusion?
According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton's picture of a universally ticking clock.Apr 16, 2018
https://www.nature.com › articles
What is time made of?
Time comes from every particle within our bodies, including our DNA that is made of these same atoms and particles. Time is the frequency of longitudinal energy waves. However, time is not constant. It changes with motion.
What is Time? – EWT - Energy Wave Theory
Does the past exist?
Events in the past and in the future do not exist. The only reality, the only thing that is real, is the present. This idea is called Presentism. This idea, however, runs into some serious problems when you start taking into account relativity.Nov 10, 2019
Are The Past And Future Real? The Physics And Philosophy Of Time
Can we travel back in time?
Time travel to the past is theoretically possible in certain general relativity spacetime geometries that permit traveling faster than the speed of light, such as cosmic strings, traversable wormholes, and Alcubierre drives.
It goes on and on with questions and concepts. Really fun.
Amazing what you can find out on Google. We have those old Encyclopedias and now you can't even give them away!
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty amazing.
DeleteYou are Googling some quite lofty ideas. I tend to Google things like "When did Divine die?" and "What was the top pop song on Jan. 14, 1972?"
ReplyDeleteYou can still read encyclopedias by hopping around on Wikipedia. (Realizing that what you read may or may not be absolutely accurate, but Wikipedia is more reliable now than it used to be.)
Ha! I google things like that, too. And I definitely spend time on the couch with my iPad, perusing Wikipedia.
Delete(-: Time travel. A cousin of mine has been fascinated by the idea of aliens visiting our planet and is convinced of their presence. Coincidentally, yesterday she told me that the aliens are visiting our planet from a future time in hopes of helping us in this time. I'm not a believer in aliens, but I believe that my cousin believes in them and their kindness.
ReplyDeleteSearching in Google is like looking into multiple encyclopedias. I remember hot summer days in Northern California when I would sit alone in our cool basement and look through my father's set of Encyclopedia Britannicas. I felt happy reading what you found out about time on Google. Definitely a source of fun.
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Thanks am! I'm always happy to hear your thoughts about, well, anything!
DeleteThe problem I see with time travel is that whenever you are it is always now.
Deletemimmylynn, I guess you are right!
Deleteam, you may enjoy this article from the New Yorker (you may have already read it). https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/25/have-we-already-been-visited-by-aliens
Delete(-: Interesting, Colette. You've reminded that there are nuances when it comes to the topic of aliens. Although I don't believe in the kind of aliens that my cousin believes in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_alien), I am completely open to the idea that our planet is not the only place in time and space with living beings. I'm also reminded of the charged topic of God. When people say they believe in God or don't believe in God, one never knows exactly what they mean by God. A blogger addressed this in an intriguing way:
Deletehttp://koshtra.blogspot.com/2022/08/dismantling.html
Out of curiosity, I googled "God." There are 6,090,000,000 results (0.65 seconds), compared with "time" at 25,270,000,000. It appears that the top googled words are "Facebook," "YouTube," "Amazon" and "weather." Here's the top 100 list:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/top-google-searches/
#50 is "indeed" and, delightfully, #76 is the word for "time" in Spanish -- "tiempo."
(-: (-: (-: Fun!
Thanks! Lots of good "stuff" to look at and think about.
Delete(-: Still making many mistakes in Spanish. "Tiempo" is weather!
DeleteI'm the same way with google, I always want to know stuff. This stuff about time, fascinating, and thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteYou bet!
DeleteI think about time in so many different ways. How old is the universe? Our galaxy? Solar System? Earth? I think about fossils and my blink of an eye presence here. "Time it was and what a time it was..." (Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel).
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a mystery.
DeleteWe're all down this rabbit hole. As a kid I intended to read every book in the library, commencing with 'a'. What a breadth of ideas. One set of books diverted me into so far into Ohio history I've never recovered.
ReplyDeleteI can well imagine how interesting a set of books about Ohio history must be. It was so important in the settling of the country, filled with pioneers and adventurers. And then the industrial age.
DeleteSome interesting information there. The odd thing about time is that sometimes it feels like it's going really fast, at other times it seems to be crawling along. And it's not just because something is either engrossing us or boring us. It's some sort of perceptual thing.
ReplyDeleteSo true.
DeleteSuch deep thinkers here today, Colette! The older I get the faster time is flying by for me.
ReplyDeleteIt's the same for me, I can hardly believe it.
DeleteRather than just nibbling at him, I can thoroughly recommend taking Rovelli in larger chunks. Though not much larger. His Seven Brief Lessons on Physics ("The phenomenal bestseller": New Scientist) is only 79 pages long and is printed in a typeface for those with imperfect eyesight. He deliberately takes six really difficult concepts and renders them in language comprehensible for readers with the meanest of formal education (eg, me). But don't take my word for it.
ReplyDelete"Beautiful.... reminds us that the roots of science are curiosity and wonder". Lee Smolin.
"(He) has a rare knack for conveying the top line of scientific theories in clear and compelling terms..." Nicola Davis, The Observer.
"By God, it's beguiling." Michael Brooks, New Statesman.
Bought as a prezzie for me by V, my wife, it has become one of my bedside books. To re-read and to delight in.
Hey, thanks!
DeleteEinstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Short stories about time.
ReplyDeleteA marvelous read.
deborah
Thanks!
DeleteThanks to my recent interest in "The Big Bang Theory" I have been thinking about science-y things a lot. Now I have all this new info and more stuff to dive into. Cool.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy.
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