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About Time

Dr. Paul Davis was a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He wrote the book About Time in 1995. He examined the deep mysteries of time and explored the consequences of Einstein’s relativity theory in his book. He was critical of Einstein’s concept of time as elastic, warped by rapid motion or gravitation, and that time cannot be meaningful divided into past, present, and future. Davis finds evidence that our current theory of time simply doesn’t add up.

Davis understands Einstein’s space-time concept very well. He knows time inside and outside, from the unit measure of time to cosmic string, from Western philosophy to Eastern philosophy, yet he still said in his book that he doesn’t know what time means to him. Why was he so confused about time? Maybe because most scientists believe in relativity theory rather than actually understanding the theory.

Time Definitions and Quotations

From time to time, time has had different definitions:

[Time is] the measured or measurable period during which an action, process or condition exists or continues. (Webster’s Dictionary, 1971)

[Time is] the period between two events or during which something exists, happens etc. (Webster’s Dictionary, 1976)

[Time is] an interval comprising a limited and continuous action. (Webster’s Third International Dictionary, 1993)

[Time is] a dimension that enables two identical events occurring at the same point in space to be distinguished, measured by the interval between the events. (Encarta World English Dictionary, 1999)

[Time is] the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other as past, present, future indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another. (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, 2001)

There are lots of quotations about time in Western history as well as in Eastern history. Here are some that show thinking about the time in different ways:

Time cuts down all, both great and small. (The New England Primer, 1690)

Time is one’s best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence. (A. Bronson Alcott, 1877)

Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land. So the little minutes, humble through they be, make the mighty ages of eternity. (Julia Carney, 1845)

Time is a test of trouble, but not a remedy. If such it prove, it proves too. There was no malady. (Emily Dickinson, 1896)

Time is a great legalizer, ever in the field of morals. (H. L. Mencken, 1917)

This is a world that goes slowly, because it has an eternity to go in. (Thomas B. Reed, 1890)

I never yet talked to the man who wanted to save time, who could tell me about he was going to do with the time he saved. (Will Rogers, 1972)

The future is no more uncertain than the present. (Walt Whitman, 1856)

An inch (space) of time has equivalent value of an inch (size) of gold.

(一寸光陰，一寸金)

Time is faster than a flying arrow; sun and moon like spindle does its web.

(光陰似箭，日月如梭)

New Concept of Time

Time has a unique value which never repeats itself. It is a perfect one-time pad for unbreakable encryption technology. (Daniel T. Yu, 1999)

Time is capable of measuring anything which is faster than speed of light. (Daniel T. Yu, 2000)

To study time is to study speed. (Daniel T. Yu, 2002)

The present can never be a part of time just as zero and infinity do not exist in eternity. (Daniel T. Yu, 2004)

Actually, the concept of time starts as one day. One day start from sunrise to sunset and from sunset to next sunrise. This cycle formed one day. Added days together becoming week, month, year, decade, century, and millennium. We subdivided one day into hours, minutes, and seconds. Second is the smallest time unit. In ancient Chinese literature, the Chinese use the word “quo-yin” (光陰) as time. The meaning of quo-yin is lightness and darkness.

Time Devices

A walk through time devices may help us gain a better understanding about time. Humans apply different concepts of time to different types of objects and materials. The sun, moon, water, fire, sand, stone, wood, metal, ammonia, crystal, and cesium have been used to measure the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond, picosecond, and femtosecond.

Approximately five thousand years ago, Egyptians used a tall stone pillar to build a four-sided monument. The monument with its moving shadow formed a kind of sundial, enabling people to divide the day into morning and afternoon, with additional partitions into hours. The length of the shadow at noon also distinguished the shortest and longest days of the year.

In the Chinese language, time（時間）means “space between hours.” In prior eras, each Chinese hour equaled two hours of our modern time. Western and Eastern peoples in ancient days had the same concept that an hour is the smallest meaningful unit of time. Ancient Chinese used a lighted candle to measure the hours of the evening and used an incense stick to measure time within an hour.

Egyptians invented the water clock about 3,500 years ago. Water clocks were among the earliest timekeepers that didn’t depend on the observation of natural phenomenon in the solar system. A water clock is a volume concept of time, using water dripping at a fairly constant rate. Mechanized water clocks, with differing types of pointers that were dials based on an astrological model of the universe, were developed about 2,500 years ago by Greek and Roman horologists.

In the Han dynasty (third century), the Chinese invented the clepsydras, a device to measure time by noting the amount of water or mercury that passed through a small aperture over a particular period. It was Su Sung who built the most elaborate clock tower in the ninth century. Su Sung used a water-driven escapement mechanism on a thirty-foot-tall clock tower that had a bronze weight-power-driven armillary sphere for observation, an automatically rotating earthlike globe, and employing a front panel with doors that permitted viewing of a little human body figure that rang gongs. The clock held tablets indicating the hours, with twelve partitions for the day. The ancient Chinese twelve-time partitions are not in numbers but in Chinese characters, each character equivalent to two hours in our time.

In the first half of the fourteenth century, large mechanical clocks were invented in Italy. Then clocks were weight-driven (a natural force) and regulated by a verge escapement. As with water flow, the rate was difficult to regulate because of the pressure problem caused by weight and resistance of air particles.

Accurate mechanical clocks were invented by Dutch scientists in the seventeenth century. Christiaan Huygens made the first weight-swinging clock regulated by a swinging weight or oscillating mechanism.

From the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century, the accuracy of mechanical clocks and watches has been improved from 0.20 a second per day down to a 0.01 of a second per day.

Atomic Clock

The quartz crystal oscillation clock was developed in the early 1920s. It gave birth to quantum mechanics science.

The quartz clock operation is based on the piezoelectric property of quartz crystals, which generate an electric field that change its shape when you apply pressure on the crystals. This interaction between mechanical stress and electrical fields causes the crystals to vibrate and generate a near-constant electric frequency signal that can be fed into a digital display window. The first atomic clock was built in 1949 with ammonia rather than quartz crystals. However, its performance was not much better than crystal-based clocks and scientists shifted attention to the more promising atomic beam devices based on cesium, a rare silver-white chemical element of the alkali metals group. Cesium, one of the most reactive chemical elements, is also used in photoelectric cells. The first cesium atomic clock was built in England in 1955. The cesium atom’s natural frequency was formally recognized as the new international unit of time in the late 1960s. The second was newly defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the cesium atom’s resonant frequency (each oscillation is one nanosecond). One second is no more definite to be 1/84,400 of a day. The cesium atomic clock has been used on satellites for the Global Positioning System (GPS). Was Einstein’s resolution of his “time dilation problem” right or wrong? “Time dilation” may happen because of environmental changes. It really has nothing at all to do with the speed of light. The synchronization of atomic clocks is a very hard task. No two atomic clocks will be exactly within one nanosecond of agreement.

The Blair clock is based on an ultrapure crystal of sapphire shaped like a fat spindle a few centimeters across. When sapphire is struck, it will ring with the purest tone, a high-pitch song, a high-speed wave of an extremely small wavelength. This is why wave theory and superstring theory got into quantum mechanics. The superstring theory uses nine space dimensions plus a time dimension and mathematically proves the speed of string oscillation at 10^-33. It still needs an M theory, which is an unknown eleventh dimension. The M theory is fundamental to superstring theories emerged that have special limits. Is the underlying problem the existence of infinite dimensions? Will proving space has (close to the edge of) infinite dimensions help solve the problem? I discuss space has infinite dimensions in great detail in chapter 3.

Computer with Real-Time Clock

A watch may not be called a watch. A watch could be a high-frequency transmission display unit (FTDU). It is a super accurate, radio-controlled receiver unit on a wrist. An FTDU automatically sets the date and time from the official time (atomic clock) transmitter. It lets you choose from twenty-four time zones and automatically adjusts for daylight saving time. It has much better value than a Rolex.

A clock may not be called a clock. A supercomputer, such as Japan’s Earth Simulator, was the most advanced and complicated atomic clock in 2002. The Japanese computer simulates the Earth’s movement and time. How fast a computer is really means how accurate the time is. Atomic clocks have limited usage unless computer speed is fast enough to catch (record) real-time clock speed at one-nanosecond scale. Computers with a nanosecond real-time clock became the best timekeeper devices in the history of science. Nanotechnology will have a revolutionary effect in quantum physics, quantum chemistry, microbiology, material science, and many other science fields.

Equation of Eternity

Let us go back to the original question. What is time?

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) said motion through space produces time. This concept leads some physicists to believe Tesla failed to understand that Einstein’s theory is not about curved space at all, but curved space-time. Tesla was actively conducting his research during the time of Einstein’s research. We may use both Tesla’s concept of time and Einstein’s concept of time and combine the concepts in one sentence:

Time is a unit measure of movement in speed.

The important word here is the ‘unit measure’. When time is approaching to zero, the speed is approaching to infinitely large. When speed is approaching to zero, the time is approaching to infinitely large. The ‘speed of light’ is neither a numerical value nor a rational number. It is a speed which is a function of space and time. One year of time at the speed of three hundred thousand kilometers per second which has same meaning in distance as one century of time at the speed of three hundred kilometers per second . Without knowing the actual distance between two planets, using ‘ light-year’ to describe the distance is a meaningless thing.

We already clearly defined that the unit measures of time are century, decade, year, month, day, hour, minute, second, millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond, picosecond, and femtosecond, which is 10^-15 in speed (1/10^-15 in time). Among all units of time measurement, “one second” is the true basic unit measure of all time measurements.

The above time unit measuring system is universally recognized. It has a true meaning of globalization. Unfortunately, the measurements for distance, size, volume, and weight are not as globalized as they should be.

In mathematical language, one (1) is the only true basic constant number. Every number can be represented by forms of one (1):

(1) time > 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + …

Where 1 is a unit measure of time. The value of time is greater than the value that is at the edge of infinitely large, notated as (∞e).

Where 1 is a unit measure of one (1) second. The value of time is smaller than the value that is at the edge of zero, notated as (0e).

Under one (1) second, speed has a reciprocal value of time (speed = 1 / time).

Therefore, time is capable of measuring anything that is faster than the speed of light.

Combining both equation (1) and equation (2), we have equation of eternity.

(3) ∞e < T < 0e

Therefore, the present can never be a part of time, just as zero and infinity do not exist in eternity. This is the reason why I used close to the edge of zero and close to the edge of infinite.

If we use unit of measurement 1 as one (1) year, add all actions, events, movements, relatively associated actions and movements, and the sum of all approaches is a value that is at the edge of infinitely large (∞v). Since zero and infinity do not exist, therefore, the edge of infinitely large is used.

Therefore, no matter how you look at the value of time in formula (1) horizontally or vertically, time has a total value that is at the edge of infinitely large (∞t).

∞e + ∞v = ∞t

where ∞t is still at the edge of infinitely large (∞)

If infinite (∞) does exist in reality, then ∞ + ∞ = 2 (∞), infinite will lose its original meaning of “infinite.”

Therefore, there is no origin or end in time.

Or as Einstein said, “The universe is open and static in nature with no major structure change.”