The Mystery of Time…

The concept of time underwent many metamorphoses. The real reason for time is to keep all things from happening simultaneously. After all, we’re all immortal. It would be one hell of a mess!

In my book: VISUALIZATION—Creating Your Own Universe, I discus various concepts of time. You might find them interesting.

“St. Thomas Aquinas proposed three types of time. Tempus concerned the “temporal” or earthly time. It measured the duration of changes taking place on earth. The second type of time Aquinas called aevum, or time affecting changes in or of mental processes. It did not concern material changes but rather changes in mental states. It also applied to all that is incorporeal, to angels and to states of consciousness. The third type of time Aquinas called the aeternitas. It concerned the divine. While it was the domain of God, it also embraced our ability to experience infinity or immortality in a single instant. It is the time that permits the present and infinity to be one.

In science, Aristotle and Newton measured time unambiguously as the duration between two events. They believed it was absolute time.

Then… Einstein destroyed the misconception that time is absolute. In his theory of relativity he married the concept of time and space into a single idea of space-time. According to the physicist Stephen Hawking, the distinction between space and time disappears completely when using imaginary time; time measured using imaginary numbers. There is no difference between going forward or backward in imaginary time.

(Surely this is the only time used by politicians, but back to science…)

We can also go in any direction in space. Other scientists took up the banner and came up with different definitions of time responding to different qualities and/or events of past, present and future.

Another Professor of mathematical physics, Frank Tipler PhD, offers us an elaborate menu of different ‘times’. He measures duration in terms of proper time, as measured by our clocks in the present astrophysical environment. Using this definition, time and space is measured in the same units, i.e. if time is measured in years then distance is measured in light years. He also computes in conformal time, which is measured in terms of a specific scale factor. We don’t have to worry about it because, as far as I understand, it is used only to calculate the behavior of light rays.

Then there is the entropic time, which “is a more physically significant time-scale than proper time.” It is used to measure the amount of entropy that exists in the universe at a specific proper time.

Next is the subjective time defined as the time required to store irreversibly one bit of information. Rather as in the speeds of computers.

Finally the theoretical physicists use the York time, so called after the American physicist James York, which simplifies mathematics of the field equations.”

More about time at another time. For now, I leave you with NOW. Find out for yourself. Below. 

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