March 9, 2015--Bending Time
Twice a year we have our own little experience with Einstein's Theory of Relativity. When in the fall we fall back, turning our clocks back an hour, and as we did yesterday by springing forward, losing an hour as we turned our clocks forward.
Some say this semiannual ritual is outdated. That it is a vestigial product of the agricultural era when men and their sons plowed and worked the fields from sun up to sun down and wanted to make the work day more productive by adding an hour of daylight as the growing season began in early March. And thus 100 years ago Daylight Savings Time was invented. But now that few work on farms, many more in offices, we should just leave our clocks alone, they say, and thereby reduce the confusion and crankiness that inevitably occurs whenever an hour is "lost" or "gained."
I put quotation marks around lost and gained because strictly speaking there is no time lost nor gained--all we do is change the clocks, which, in Einsteinian terms do not in reality keep track of what he would consider time. Time to him, and now to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of his work, is independent of our ability to measure it and even if we figured out how to do that in absolute terms, the reality of time would elude us since there is no such thing as time that is immutable. It is relative, shifting as circumstances affect it.
To complicate matters further, there is that supernova we've been hearing about lately that "seems" to explode over and over again, with seems this time in quotes. In quotes because supernovas do not explode repeatably. At the far reaches of the universe, when they explode they do so only once, often leaving residual black holes. But as scientists reported last week about the Supernova Refsdal, approximately every ten years the Hubble telescope picks up images of its billions-of-years-ago cataclysmic destruction.
Einstein taught us this is because gravity has the capacity to bend both light and time. So Refsdal was "seen" to be exploding first in about 1964 (actually this was the visual image of its explosion billions of years ago finally reached us) and then we "saw" it explode again and again in 1995 and 2014 and we will be "seeing" it again, Groundhog Day style, some time around 2020. Not multiple explosions but the same explosion over and over again because the image of it gets to us at different times as the result of gravity's awesome light- and time-bending power. With light becoming a lens through which we "see" cosmic events and experience time.
So rather than grumble about having to fool with our clocks semiannually, why not enjoy participating in Einstein's universe by spending a little time then thinking about the "new" physics, which is now about 100 years old and thus not so new.
I like springing forward and falling back for another reason.
With my mother nearly 107, we have been living the past seven years in her time zone. Traveling up and down the I-95 corridor between New York City, Midcoast Maine, and South Florida. This is in large part to be available to get to her as quickly as possible in case we are needed and also to enable us to live with the guilt that we do not spend all year down south with her. We can say that though we are not here all year at least we won't have to cross any time zones to get to her in an emergency.
This may very well be a rationalization to cover with socially-acceptable denial the probable fact that over time whatever adventurous spirit we have has waned. We tell ourselves that living this way is only for the time being (time being being another Einsteinian concept), that we are eager to resume traveling, to make our long-deferred trip to India, to spend a year living in Rome, to wander through the Greek Islands, but while waiting for the inevitable, the passage of time to contribute to reclaiming whatever wanderlust can be revived, this twice-a-year ritual of adjusting our clocks and watches stands for what travelers are required to do when they "really" cross time zones, with really in quotes.
Some say this semiannual ritual is outdated. That it is a vestigial product of the agricultural era when men and their sons plowed and worked the fields from sun up to sun down and wanted to make the work day more productive by adding an hour of daylight as the growing season began in early March. And thus 100 years ago Daylight Savings Time was invented. But now that few work on farms, many more in offices, we should just leave our clocks alone, they say, and thereby reduce the confusion and crankiness that inevitably occurs whenever an hour is "lost" or "gained."
I put quotation marks around lost and gained because strictly speaking there is no time lost nor gained--all we do is change the clocks, which, in Einsteinian terms do not in reality keep track of what he would consider time. Time to him, and now to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of his work, is independent of our ability to measure it and even if we figured out how to do that in absolute terms, the reality of time would elude us since there is no such thing as time that is immutable. It is relative, shifting as circumstances affect it.
To complicate matters further, there is that supernova we've been hearing about lately that "seems" to explode over and over again, with seems this time in quotes. In quotes because supernovas do not explode repeatably. At the far reaches of the universe, when they explode they do so only once, often leaving residual black holes. But as scientists reported last week about the Supernova Refsdal, approximately every ten years the Hubble telescope picks up images of its billions-of-years-ago cataclysmic destruction.
Einstein taught us this is because gravity has the capacity to bend both light and time. So Refsdal was "seen" to be exploding first in about 1964 (actually this was the visual image of its explosion billions of years ago finally reached us) and then we "saw" it explode again and again in 1995 and 2014 and we will be "seeing" it again, Groundhog Day style, some time around 2020. Not multiple explosions but the same explosion over and over again because the image of it gets to us at different times as the result of gravity's awesome light- and time-bending power. With light becoming a lens through which we "see" cosmic events and experience time.
So rather than grumble about having to fool with our clocks semiannually, why not enjoy participating in Einstein's universe by spending a little time then thinking about the "new" physics, which is now about 100 years old and thus not so new.
I like springing forward and falling back for another reason.
With my mother nearly 107, we have been living the past seven years in her time zone. Traveling up and down the I-95 corridor between New York City, Midcoast Maine, and South Florida. This is in large part to be available to get to her as quickly as possible in case we are needed and also to enable us to live with the guilt that we do not spend all year down south with her. We can say that though we are not here all year at least we won't have to cross any time zones to get to her in an emergency.
This may very well be a rationalization to cover with socially-acceptable denial the probable fact that over time whatever adventurous spirit we have has waned. We tell ourselves that living this way is only for the time being (time being being another Einsteinian concept), that we are eager to resume traveling, to make our long-deferred trip to India, to spend a year living in Rome, to wander through the Greek Islands, but while waiting for the inevitable, the passage of time to contribute to reclaiming whatever wanderlust can be revived, this twice-a-year ritual of adjusting our clocks and watches stands for what travelers are required to do when they "really" cross time zones, with really in quotes.
Labels: Daylight Savings Time, Einstein, Gravity, Light, Relativity, Supernova Refsdal, Supernovas, The Universe, Theory of Relativity, Time, Travel, Wanderlust
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:47 AM
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