WHAT IS THE TIME NOW? A QUESTION, IMPOSSIBLE TO ANSWER

28 March 2013

 Today I got up in the morning, looked at the clock that hangs on the wall opposite our bed, it was showing 9 O’clock. Usually I get up around 8 O’clock. I did not want to get up late as an old colleague of mine was coming to see me at around 10 AM.  I ran down to the kitchen to have a quick cup of tea. While the tea was brewing, I glanced at the kitchen clock. It showed 8:10 AM. I thought it had stopped, but it was ticking all right.

    A narrow strip of sunlight was coming through our window. Yesterday morning when I was making tea, I had remarked to Bibha that the strip of sunlight was falling exactly in the middle of the microwave oven. I looked at the oven; the sunlight was at the same place.  According to this, the clock in the kitchen must be right.  I almost called Bibha to bring the bedroom clock down so that I can correct the time, but I remembered the clock upstairs was radio controlled. It corrects itself syncing with the time signals from The National Physical Laboratory in Rugby.

The penny suddenly dropped! British Summer Time must have started last night. The bedroom clock has automatically moved one hour forward. I had lost sixty minutes of time.  In reality I have not lost any time, it is just an illusion created by the clocks in collusion with 1916 British Summer Time act.

 Can we ditch the clocks? Can we perceive time without them?

We can physically perceive only a present event, so any notion of time has to be measured from a past or to a future event. Past exists only in our memory and future only in our imagination. Both can be very deceptive. That is why same time interval appears longer or shorter to different persons or at different occasion to same person. When one is bored or not enjoying the present event, time seems to pass slowly; and when one is enjoying the activity, time seems to pass rapidly. Time as we perceive, is really a construct of our mind, nothing more.

I should make it clear here that we do not really perceive time but only passage of time. A train has now moved to “B” from “A” and soon it will get to “C”. What separates past (A) from the Present (B) and the Future (C) is time. We perceive time only when it moves. It is like air. We do not perceive air; only wind i.e. movement of air. But air is there. And so is Time. Since we came into the world, air was there. We have developed with air always surrounding us. That is why we do not perceive air as such. However if we move to or from an air free environment, we will notice the air, for example coming out from underwater swimming.

We cannot perceive time as such because there is no time free zone in our universe. Space and Time form the very fabric of our universe. Clocks actually do not measure time, they are just ticking along, same as me or you, or everything else in the universe. The time deduced from the position of Sun and other stars does not measure time but just gives an indication of the movement of the earth. And like my clock if the movement diminishes or increases, we get wrong time. All these clocks can only measure passage of time, not the time itself. Luckily, time only moves in one direction in our universe.

 So what is the time at present? No one can tell, as it cannot be measured!