Tristan Coleman
Nov 6 · 3 min read

Great read on a very difficult subject to disect. I have tended to come at the ‘Time’ topic from a scientific point of view, rather than trying to explain any firsthand experiences. Here is a brief summary of my trail of thought thus far:

(I will skip over what might be considered the obvious scientific starting point on ‘time’, namely the second law of thermodynamics — entropy; the fact the universe tends to move from a state of orderliness to disorderliness along a an ‘arrow of time’, since it seems to me not to fundamentally explain what time *is*, but rather the relationship of randomness and probabilities acting *within* time).

There is the idea of time being a ‘dimension’, something like, but not quite the same as, the 3 physical dimensions of classical physics. Einstein proposed his famous theories of relativity (gravity) within which he combined ‘space’ and ‘time’ and came up with ‘spacetime’ (naturally!). While I really respect the powerful utility that this idea has given us in predicting various phenomenon on a cosmic scale, I don’t believe that it explains anything ‘real’. I would argue that what relativity gave us were mathematical ‘abstractions’, rather than anything ‘physical’. Ditto with the concept of the ‘beginning of time’, t=0, from a moment known as the Big Bang; this seems to be the ultimate mathematical construct, but no more ‘real’ or ‘physical’ than say ideas of intelligent design/ creators/ and so on. Suffice to say, I don’t find relativity-based, mathematical constructs of ‘time’ very satisfactory.

Is ‘time’ an abstract concept? After all, we don’t actually measure ‘time’ as such, we just record the revolutions of the Earth, or count the ticking of a clock, and so on. But *not time itself*. Merely the frequency of something that happens at known, regular intervals. In the same way that we cannot measure heat (which is fundamentally the movement of molecules) — only the movement of mercury in a bulb, or the change in voltage across a thermocouple (caused by changes in energy). But not ‘heat’ itself.

So what is time, fundamentally, and what is it that we are actually experiencing?

Isn’t time just a measure of how many ‘things’ can happen relative to some other ‘thing’? A ratio? We commonly use ‘seconds’, ‘days’ etc. to represent the ‘how many things can happen’. But you could say it takes one completion of the theme tune to Grange Hill to boil the kettle. Or it takes seven plays of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ to drive to the shops. And so on. The completion of any ‘thing’ relative to the completion of any other ‘thing’. That is time. Strip away the units, strip away the abstractions. Measuring the completion (in full or in part) of a processes, an event, relative to another. It’s that *ratio* itself — that is ‘time’.

The question at the core of your article; can time stand still? Take two particles that experience ‘quantum entanglement’. If you spin particle 1, how long until particle 2 spins? In this case the answer is ZERO, i.e. the transfer of information is instantaneous — therefore no other event/s, no processes, can happen *relative to* the second event (the transfer of information between the particles). And so time has no meaning in this context, we are dividing by zero.. there is no ‘ratio’.. therefore there is no ‘time’.. could this be what it means for time to stand still?

When you are focused on something deeply, ‘on another level’, oblivious to the outside world, all else is removed from your consciousness. If time is nothing but a ratio between two sets of ‘things’, but in your consciousness there is only the one ‘thing’ that consumes you, then again, there can be no ratio.. therefore there can be no time.. has time just stood still?

    Tristan Coleman

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