What is the “Shape” of Time?
Why do humans perceive linear time? How come we can’t travel through time? Does it have anything to do with the “shape of time”?
Time has always been a mystery ever since humans started keeping track of the passage of it. Some folks would tell you that time doesn’t exist at all and is just a human construct.
Others may say that time is just another dimension in which one can move, exist, and consume energy. As of now, neither of these theories can be called incorrect — so for now, they are both true.
The strange thing about time is that it is the most measured thing in our lives. Humans are all but consumed by the passage of time — how much time until their next raise, or how much time they waited in line at the grocery store on Sunday.
Although we measure it, worry about it, and wish we had more of it, we have absolutely no idea what it is that we are measuring or worrying about!
Why do we perceive time linearly?
How come we can’t travel back or forward through time?
In this text, we’ll explore a rather wild theory of mine about why humans perceive time linearly, and why we cannot travel through time!
Travelling With Time
First, let’s set a nice scene in our minds which we will use as a foundation for this starting analogy. Let’s also get clear on a few very important concepts that can be easily confused.
As far as we know, we cannot travel through time. Rather, we travel WITH time — all of us, at the same rate.
Our scene will start with a calm river quietly flowing on a nice sunny afternoon. The river’s current is obvious, but very gentle. As far as the eye can see, the surface of the water is moving at the same rate everywhere.
You see a leaf floating along on the surface of the water. It gently glides down the river at the slow and steady pace of the river’s current.
The river in this analogy represents time itself. The gentle current represents the passage, or speed, of time. Lastly, the leaf floating right on the surface of the water represents us riding down the river of time at a constant rate.
In our analogy, there is no way for us (the leaf) to change our trajectory on the water without external influence. We can only travel with the current of the river, and in no other direction.
That is “travelling with time”.
Rather than a leaf, imagine a fish in that exact same river with the exact same calm conditions. The fish, unlike the leaf, can move any which way it wants through the water. Hell, if it wanted to, it could even jump up and out of the water!
The fish, unlike the leaf, can “travel THROUGH time”.
However, the fish doesn’t HAVE to travel through time. If it desires, it can certainly be carried with the current of the river — travelling with time.
That is the difference between travelling “through” and “with” time. Humans are a leaf floating on a river at the mercy of the natural pace of time.
That specific analogy doesn’t have much to do with the theory itself, but it starts us off with a good definition for traveling through or with time. This will become very important as you start imagining yourself experiencing events from different frames of reference.
Frame of Reference
For example, what about the old argument that Earth is actually flat?
If you weren’t up to snuff on your knowledge of curvature the “evidence” can seem quite convincing — unfortunately. What I mean is that one of the arguments for a flat Earth is that we don’t see the curvature of the Earth from the ground. In fact, if you were to travel to the Midwest of the United States, you’d see a ton of flat, seemingly infinitely long roads and fields.
Now that does seem rather intuitive, right? If the Earth is round, then how come we don’t notice the curvature as we walk around?
The answer is quite simple, and if you can just imagine yourself from a different frame of reference, it makes much more sense!
Imagine you were a tiny bug crawling around on a giant sphere. I mean, this sphere is so large that it would take weeks for the bug to crawl around the circumference. From the bug’s frame of reference, it is just walking along a continuous straight line. Even if it were to walk at an angle across the sphere, it would experience walking across a flat plane.
However, from the frame of reference of a human who could see the entire sphere for what it is (a giant ball with a tiny bug crawling on it) they would see a round object with a tiny bug crawling around in a circular path.
Just realize what is happening here for a second. Really think about it.
The exact same event in the exact same place in spacetime can be experienced as two radically different realities depending simply on frame of reference.
This is precisely why it was important to make a distinction between “traveling with time” and “traveling through time”.
Okay, so why else do humans perceive linear time?
It is my opinion (please note, it says “my opinion” and not, “scientific fact”) that the reason humans perceive time as linear is due to two things:
- Our relative size
- The “shape of time” is a spiral
What Does Size Have to Do With Time?
Before we continue, let’s make another important distinction. Size is not the same as mass, and vice versa. Often times, especially with celestial bodies, the two can be correlated, but they are not the same thing.
For example, a neutron star can be a fraction of the size of our sun with thousands of times more mass. I’m sure you can think of plenty of other examples, but that will do for the purposes of this text.
With that out of the way, what the hell does an object’s size have to do with time at all?
This theory came to me while I was thinking of all the different pets I had over the years. It got me thinking why animals do not live nearly as long as a human. Why is it that a cat’s maximum age is about 21?
Then I thought about a house fly. The house fly lives an average of 28 days which is nothing compared to the average life of a human being. However, I realized that the house fly is way smaller than a cat.
Well, then I thought, a cat is also way smaller than a human, right? That’s when I saw a potential correlation between a being’s relative size and it’s average lifespan.
But does that logic work in reverse?
Well, the largest animal on Earth is the blue whale and it has an average life expectancy of an astonishing 90 years! That’s significantly longer than the human’s average lifespan, and a blue whale is certainly a hell of a lot bigger than us, yeah?
With that, I started thinking even deeper. I started thinking about life from the frame of reference of a house fly. Does the house fly only experience a short life of a mere 28 days? Or, from the fly’s perspective, does it live a long and fulfilling fly life?
What about the blue whale? Does the blue whale’s life feel like an eternity, or does its life, like ours, seem to go faster and faster as time goes on?
So, I then thought, what if the perceived rate of time decreases as a being’s relative size decreases? Or, inversely, what if the perceived rate of time increase with an increase of relative size?
That would sort of make sense, right?
But then, how do beings of different size interact in real-time? If the fly’s 28 day life feels the same as your 75 year life, how could you possibly interact with the fly? Wouldn’t it be moving at the speed of frozen molasses from the human’s frame of reference?
Well, just because the fly perceives time much slower than a human, that doesn’t necessarily mean it would travel with time any slower from the human’s frame of reference.
Think back to our river analogy. Let’s pretend instead of a leaf, we have a giant floating platform riding along the gentle current. On that platform there are two beings of massively different relative sizes. Maybe a blue whale and a house fly — just in case this article isn’t bonkers enough already!
From the frame of reference of a human watching the platform, both beings on the platform are moving along at the same rate. And that makes sense because both beings are travelling WITH time together at all times.
However, the two beings experience the passage of time at completely different rates because of their relative size.
Let’s imagine the platform is meant to go from one side of the river to the other as its “journey”. The river is 1,000 feet wide and the platform is moving along at 1 mph (representing the rate of passing time) toward its destination.
The platform, and its passengers, should reach their destination within a few minutes. For the blue whale, the distance is practically nothing, and it just feels like a quick ride across the river — because it was!
For the house fly, however, the 1,000 foot distance is astronomical. For the fly, it would feel like the journey took up a significant portion of its life. Maybe even a few “fly years”.
That, in my opinion, is how a being’s relative size can influence its perception of time. It also has to do with why we perceive time as linear, but there’s another crucial ingredient we have to include to complete the theory.
The Shape of Time is a “Spiral”
If you have no idea what this means, you’re not alone. It’s something that I conceptualized one day, but as far as what it physically means — if anything — is beyond me at this point.
That said, it’s a rather easy concept to visualize. In fact, it has something to do with both the flat Earth example (frame of reference) and a being’s relative size!
Using your imagination once again, imagine you are an ant crawling along a spiral object. Let’s also assume the object is suspended in the air from the top of a tall roof or ceiling.
However, the spiral object is absolutely huge relative to the ant (you) crawling along it. Much like our flat Earth example, the ant perceives its travel as a straight line. It just keeps on walking forward, faster and faster, and it continues to seemingly walk in a straight line.
From the frame of reference of a human looking at the entire spiral, the ant is going around in a circle along the spiral, but the ant has no idea it’s going around in circles.
In this example, the ant crawling along the spiral is analogous to the ant travelling WITH time. The ant perceives a linear experience, but from a different frame of reference, the reality is quite different.
Now let’s get to the meat of the story.
Instead of a basic spiral object, let’s instead imagine a helical object that the ant is crawling on. It’s still a spiral, except it’s a spiral in three dimensions, almost like a screw, or a spiral staircase. A person can walk AROUND the spiral stairs, and as they do, they actually climb (or descend) in elevation.
Although a spiral staircase makes more sense for this analogy, there is a reason I mentioned a “screw”.
A screw is typically used for fastening objects together or to secure something to a floor or wall. However, the thread of a screw had a completely different use when it was first invented.
The entire point of a thread, or a helical thread, is to convert rotational energy into linear motion. As you turn a screw in a threaded hole (rotational energy) the screw head moves closer and closer to the surface of the hole (linear motion).
Certain threads, called “ball screws”, are actually used in large CNC machines to control the travel of the large table. It’s actually a very accurate method!
The point is, a helical spiral converts rotational energy into linear motion.
So, as the ant crawls along the helix, it is going in circles around the z-axis just like before. However, it is also increasing its elevation in the z-axis with every trip around the helix! We are going to consider that increase in elevation to be the passage of time. The higher the ant climbs, the more time has elapsed.
This would mean that the ant (remember, that’s you) experiences linear time even though it is physically travelling in circles along a helical spiral while also traveling along the z-axis (elevation) in the positive direction.
Now, the only way for the ant to get to a higher rung of the helix is to walk along it until it reaches the next rung. It must go through time in order to get to a higher rung — or, in our analogy, the future.
The ant, because of its relative size compared to the helix, can’t even comprehend another way to get to the higher rung. There is just no other way to do it!
But, from the human’s perspective, there is a MUCH shorter path for the ant to take. The ant just needs to jump from one rung to another! From the human’s perspective, it’s quite obvious!
The only problem is, the ant cannot physically traverse through that dimension. It must travel along the spiral in order to get to the next rung. But, keep in mind, from the ant’s perspective, it has no idea it is actually climbing the helical object. Like humans, it may be able to measure the distance between one rung and the other, but it does not comprehend that it is indeed moving through that dimension!
Could that imply that relative size (instead of mass alone) could be considered an “extra dimension” for which we need to include in calculations about time, gravity, and other physical events in the Universe?
The Shape of Time is…
What could all of this mean? Sure, it could mean absolutely nothing, but there could be something to it. One thing is for sure, I genuinely do not believe that time travel is possible for three dimensional beings.
If there is a race of aliens who can travel through time, they are most likely extra-dimensional beings who can see the entirety of time all at once. Or maybe none of this is real and time really is just a make believe concept that humans use to track their days!
Or, maybe, just maybe, the shape of time really is some sort of spiral, or helix, on which we are unknowingly travelling…
Regardless, I thought this was a pretty fun thought experiment, and felt compelled to write about it!
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What do you think?
Do you think time could be the shape of a spiral, or helix? Do you think relative size has anything to do with a being’s perception of time?
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