TIME FLYS AS YOU AGE

 

It has been said that time is our most precious commodity.   But time is not a precise interval. As a child, time moved like a snail.  It seemed that it was an eternity between one Christmas and the next, or never-ending months until the end of the school year.   Now, as an old man, time flies by; weeks, months, and years seem to meld into one entity, in a rapid death march to oblivion.

We depend on time to order our lives; we think of time as a standard interval, but time is actually a variable.  Time moves more slowly on top of the Empire State Building than it does on the ground floor. Time slows with speed and can be bent by gravity. 

Actually, time is a concept invented by man in order to understand and regulate the world around him. 

But the universe doesn’t care.  In the universe, there is no time; just NOW.   We may be able to discern different NOWs, but that is only a human concept.     

 

A DIFFERENT NOW:

Two ground stations – A and B – thousands of miles apart.

Ground station A transmits a signal once every minute.

Ground station B receives the signal once every minute.

A supersonic aircraft leaves ground station A for ground station B.

Because the aircraft is moving away from ground station A at supersonic speeds, it receives the signal from ground station A at one-minute and twenty-second intervals.

When the aircraft receives the signal from ground station A, it simultaneously transmits a signal.

Ground station A transmits a signal every minute, the aircraft transmits a signal every one minute and twenty seconds, ground station B receives the signal from both ground station A and the aircraft simultaneously, at one-minute intervals.

One minute between ground stations A and B equates to one minute and twenty seconds on the aircraft.

Time is elapsing more slowly on the aircraft than on the ground.

But that is only a human concern, because the Universe doesn’t give a fuck.

 

the Ol’Buzzard