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Time’s Nemesis
Copyright 2009
Forward
Time… I’ve been forced to think a lot about the notion. Most of everyday life is brimming with references. “I’m out of time”, “There’snot much time”, “You’re late”, “How much time will it take?” and myfavorite… “Time will tell”.We’ve been forced from childhood to “tell time”. What the hell doesthat mean? You look at a clock, see the little hand pointing to the twoand the big hand pointing to thirty-three. Great… it’s 2:33. Wait, gottalook outside. I see the sun, so it must be 2:33 PM… you know,afternoon. That’s when the sun has been out for a while. A digital clock that reads “2:33 PM” makes this a bunch easier.A child learns that “time” runs in a “clockwise” direction. (So maybetime is circular?) The “hands” could run from left to right, but seeing aswe read from left to right, it sort of makes sense. The clock reads “12”two times a day… kind of confusing, but if you look out the window,it’s either dark or light. Pretty simple.In the modern era we could no longer say things like: “be there atsunrise”, “work till dusk” or “shoot out at high noon” and be sure theexact same reference to “time” would be used by someone else. Weneeded a more precise way to do things if you had to “be at work by8:30” or a “doctor’s appointment at 3:15”. The concept of before or afterthe “meridian” came neatly into play. The highest point of the sun in thesky or “meridian” defines AM and PM. At work by 8:30 AM, with adoctor’s appointment at 3:15 PM… cool.Some really smart people started using the twenty-four hour cycle fortime… keeps that old element of confusion down to a minimum whensaying things like: “initiate attack at 0530”. No doubt… he means 5:30in the morning, if it were afternoon, he would have said 1730 hours.When navigating the vast oceans of the world we needed a new form of accuracy. You said it was “0730”… great. But where? Well, right here.Uhhh, where is here? Hmmmm. If it was 7:30 AM in New York, it was4:30 in the morning in LA… I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a4:30 AM phone call. Better to have a consistent means for “telling time”no matter where you are.The British sailors of the 1800’s adopted this convention as an aid in
navigation. The longitude of any ship on the world’s oceans could becalibrated from the ship’s time piece set to the sun’s passing of theGreenwich meridian at high noon… Greenwich Mean Time. It provedso useful in coordinating the far-flung activities of the British Empirethat it became a modern part of life known as GMT, UTC or Zulu“time”.Astronomers who came from different cultures, religions and continentsapplied a more exacting definition with the use of Julian Days and aJulian Date. An astronomical event in the past or future could be given aprecise definition of “time”… no matter where, what type of calendar orwhat language.All this is very good… we can now define “time” with a precision thatwas only dreamed of once. But what about the core concept? Are we apart of time? Is it a part of us? Does “time” define us or do we define it?Someone once told me that time was simply a parameter by which wemeasure our existence and not a true dimension. A look at our lives by aperson outside of the constraints of “time” would see a long pink worm(or brown... or yellow... you get the drift). Pretty weird concept.The ancients were great observers. They saw the sun, moon and starsrise and set. They noticed patterns. The sun came over the horizon atdifferent places during different seasons of the year. At regular intervalsit disappeared over here and then reappeared over there. The “time” itwas overhead; the “time” it was absent; and the differing “times” of theyear were all part of a cycle.They designed Sundials, obelisks and temples sighted to the sunrise onspecific days. They cataloged the “dances of the heavens” or the“harmony of the spheres” and made events in the sky a part of life on theground. Stone Henge in England, the El Caracol at Chichen Itza inMexico and the Pyramids in Egypt are magnificent examples of thisengineering prowess.This cycle was a part of life and death. It told of seasons… when toplant, when to gather wood for the coming winter or when to travel tothe best hunting or fishing grounds. It also allowed the observant andcurious forbearer to notice a different kind of cycle. Eclipses, themovement of planets and even stars. Some heavenly bodies moved ingreat cycles of time. 72 years for a one-degree change in the position of a constellation. The complete cycle of star field motion or precession of 25,772 years was deduced. If not through the direct observation, thenenough to extrapolate the rest… pretty impressive for “stone age” man.
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