I recently discussed some the problems inherent to time travel in works of fiction. Most notably, the paradoxes contained in the Terminator and Back to the Future movies. But now I want to take a step back and look at time itself.
Does "time" even exist?
The standard notion of time is that it is a fourth dimension just as fundamental and intrinsic to the universe as the three spatial dimensions of length, width, and height.
But the truth is: time is just an abstraction of the human imagination. It is a convenient construct that we use to explain relationships between things in our universe. Like motion, time does not exist without the objects that we use as a frame of reference for measuring it.
Time is scientifically defined as a relationship to the rate of decay of a radioactive caesium atom. It is also often linked with the speed of light, which is often seen as a “cosmic speed limit”.
But is this view of time really necessary? Is time truly a fundamental property of our universe?
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning”
- Werner Heisenberg, father of quantum physics.
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Does anyone else think that Sitcom characters are way too dumb, and that laugh-tracks are stupid, irritating, and need to be taken out of sitcoms. All they do is remind you that there is supposed to be a joke there. So if you're not laughing, you know what that means? .... It means the joke isn't funny.
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