The Paradox of Time
Written By: Arman Momeni
The Clock:
Bring your attention to a clock.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
With every passing second, the thin, elongated hand moves. 60 seconds pass, and the hand has elegantly completed its full revolution around the clock, catalyzing a minute shift in the minute hand. The clock has been woven into the fabric of society; no one questions it’s emphatic, and on the surface, arbitrary existence. But what is time? Beyond the 60 seconds that comprise a minute, the 60 minutes that comprise an hour, the 24 hours that comprise a day, the 365 days that comprise a year, and the infinitival number of years that comprise the entirety of existence, what is time? Is humanity the creator of time or is time a notion that precedes any understanding of the universe? Does time make us grow old or are we fleeting entities flowing through a boundless, timeless universe? This article from Science ReWired explores time and what it truly represents.
Einstein:
Where is your favourite place to work, where your mind can run free and produce your best ideas? For some it’s at the office. For some it’s at home. And for others it’s at an obscure place, such as a park bench or the bus. For Einstein, it was the patent office, where he worked in the early 1900s. Einstein came up with his greatest theories whilst working steadily, reviewing patent applications. He believed that when his mind was focused on a repetitive action, it was actually free to think. Luckily, Einstein’s job at the patent office was convenient for another reason, it resided in the city of Bern, famous for its medieval architecture and beautiful clock towers. He couldn’t escape them. Every day, on his way home, Einstein passed by the many clock towers while enjoying fruitful conversations with his best friend Michele Besso. They often spoke about science and philosophy, with one abrupt, inescapable topic constantly finding its way into their conversations: What is the nature of time?
After a conversation with Besso, Einstein came to a sudden realization. Yes, to him, the clock tower moved at a constant pace, and each day it moved at that same pace; however, while time seemed deceptively absolute, it was, in fact, not. In simpler terms, Einstein believed that despite the established idea that a second is a second everywhere in the entire, grand universe, the rate at which time flows depends upon where one is, and how fast one is travelling. While you may hear the tedious, agonizing ticks and tocks of the clock, which hangs on your wall, there is no audible tick tock that rummages and echoes throughout the universe. Time is relative.
The Paradox of Time:
Prior to Einstein, for centuries, time was regarded as a constant, a force independent of the universe’s other laws. Yes, as it would seem, we thought that there was one single clock that ruled the universe. It makes sense. Why would we need any other explanation?
Einstein, however, changed the game, transforming time and clocks into a mere figment of our imagination, an attempt by humans to control the presumed flow of reality. But time can be, and is, different for everyone. As Einstein said, an hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench seems like 10 minutes, yet a minute with your hand placed on a burning stove seems like an hour. That’s relativity.
Relativity states that if two people move at drastically different speeds, their understanding and comprehension of time will, relative to their speeds, be drastically different. This phenomenon is known as time dilation.
What does this mean for our understanding of the universe and time itself?
Well, it brings us to a paradox. Not one of the traditional kind, but one where humanity contradicts itself. We are presented with a paradox of perception and reality; time is a constant on earth, and thus to humanity, but in reality, throughout the cosmos, time is relative. Time is merely another example of humans confining themselves to strict, adherent rules. Understanding that time is relative forces us to reconsider our place in the cosmos, grappling with the idea that nothing, not even the processing of the minutes in our lives, is constant and set in stone. Just as time refuses to pertain to the absolute ideals that we’ve stricken it to, we should not confine ourselves to the limits addressed by human comprehension. Earth, the universe, time, it’s all boundless, so is our place and purpose within it.
Works Cited:
Einstein’s theory and Time. American Museum of Natural History. (n.d.). https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/time#:~:text=After%20one%20such%20discussion%2C%20Einstein,how%20fast%20you%20are%20traveling.
Anthony Philipson. 2024. Einstein and the Bomb. BBC Studios.
