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‘Time is elastic’: Why time passes faster atop a mountain than at sea level
The idea of 'absolute time' is an illusion. Physics and subjective experience reveal why.
- Since Einstein posited his theory of general relativity, we've understood that gravity has the power to warp space and time.
- This "time dilation" effect occurs even at small levels.
- Outside of physics, we experience distortions in how we perceive time — sometimes to a startling extent.
Place one clock at the top of a mountain. Place another on the beach. Eventually, you'll see that each clock tells a different time. Why? Time moves slower as you get closer to Earth, because, as Einstein posited in his theory of general relativity, the gravity of a large mass, like Earth, warps the space and time around it.
Scientists first observed this "time dilation" effect on the cosmic scale, such as when a star passes near a black hole. Then, in 2010, researchers observed the same effect on a much smaller scale, using two extremely precise atomic clocks, one placed 33 centimeters higher than the other. Again, time moved slower for the clock closer to Earth.
The differences were tiny, but the implications were massive: absolute time does not exist. For each clock in the world, and for each of us, time passes slightly differently. But even if time is passing at ever-fluctuating speeds throughout the universe, time is still passing in some kind of objective sense, right? Maybe not.
Physics without time
In his book "The Order of Time," Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli suggests that our perception of time — our sense that time is forever flowing forward — could be a highly subjective projection. After all, when you look at reality on the smallest scale (using equations of quantum gravity, at least), time vanishes.
"If I observe the microscopic state of things," writes Rovelli, "then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between 'cause' and 'effect.'"
So, why do we perceive time as flowing forward? Rovelli notes that, although time disappears on extremely small scales, we still obviously perceive events occur sequentially in reality. In other words, we observe entropy: Order changing into disorder; an egg cracking and getting scrambled.
Rovelli says key aspects of time are described by the second law of thermodynamics, which states that heat always passes from hot to cold. This is a one-way street. For example, an ice cube melts into a hot cup of tea, never the reverse. Rovelli suggests a similar phenomenon might explain why we're only able to perceive the past and not the future.
"Any time the future is definitely distinguishable from the past, there is something like heat involved," Rovelli wrote for the Financial Times. "Thermodynamics traces the direction of time to something called the 'low entropy of the past', a still mysterious phenomenon on which discussions rage."
He continues:
"Entropy growth orients time and permits the existence of traces of the past, and these permit the possibility of memories, which hold together our sense of identity. I suspect that what we call the "flowing" of time has to be understood by studying the structure of our brain rather than by studying physics: evolution has shaped our brain into a machine that feeds off memory in order to anticipate the future. This is what we are listening to when we listen to the passing of time. Understanding the "flowing" of time is therefore something that may pertain to neuroscience more than to fundamental physics. Searching for the explanation of the feeling of flow in physics might be a mistake."
Scientists still have much to learn about how we perceive time, and why time operates differently depending on the scale. But what's certain is that, outside of the realm of physics, our individual perception of time is also surprisingly elastic.
The strange subjectivity of time
Time moves differently atop a mountain than it does on a beach. But you don't need to travel any distance at all to experience strange distortions in your perception of time. In moments of life-or-death fear, for example, your brain would release large amounts of adrenaline, which would speed up your internal clock, causing you to perceive the outside world as moving slowly.
Another common distortion occurs when we focus our attention in particular ways.
"If you're thinking about how time is currently passing by, the biggest factor influencing your time perception is attention," Aaron Sackett, associate professor of marketing at the University of St. Thomas, told Gizmodo. "The more attention you give to the passage of time, the slower it tends to go. As you become distracted from time's passing—perhaps by something interesting happening nearby, or a good daydreaming session—you're more likely to lose track of time, giving you the feeling that it's slipping by more quickly than before. "Time flies when you're having fun," they say, but really, it's more like "time flies when you're thinking about other things." That's why time will also often fly by when you're definitely not having fun—like when you're having a heated argument or are terrified about an upcoming presentation."
One of the most mysterious ways people experience time-perception distortions is through psychedelic drugs. In an interview with The Guardian, Rovelli described a time he experimented with LSD.
"It was an extraordinarily strong experience that touched me also intellectually," he said. "Among the strange phenomena was the sense of time stopping. Things were happening in my mind but the clock was not going ahead; the flow of time was not passing any more. It was a total subversion of the structure of reality."
It seems few scientists or philosophers believe time is completely an illusion.
"What we call time is a rich, stratified concept; it has many layers," Rovelli told Physics Today. "Some of time's layers apply only at limited scales within limited domains. This does not make them illusions."
What is an illusion is the idea that time flows at an absolute rate. The river of time might be flowing forever forward, but it moves at different speeds, between people, and even within your own mind.- Different Personalities Experience Time Differently - Big Think ›
- 4 temporal illusions your brain regularly employs - Big Think ›
Fast superhighway through the Solar System discovered
Scientists find routes using arches of chaos that can lead to much faster space travel.
Arches of chaos in space manifolds.
- Researchers discovered a route through the Solar System that can allow for much faster spacecraft travel.
- The path takes advantage of "arches of chaos" within space manifolds.
- The scientists think this "celestial superhighway" can help humans get to the far reaches of the galaxy.
Humanity could be making its way through the Solar System much faster thanks to the discovery of a new superhighway network among space manifolds. Don't get your engines roaring along this "celestial autobahn" just yet, but the researchers believe the new pathways can eventually be used by spacecraft to get to the outer reaches of our Solar System with relative haste.
The celestial highway could get comets and asteroids from Jupiter to Neptune in less than a decade. Compare that to hundreds of thousands or even millions of years it might ordinarily take for space objects to traverse the Solar System. In a century of travel along the new routes, a 100 astronomical units could be covered, project the scientists. For reference, an astronomical unit is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun or about 93 million miles.
The international research team included Nataša Todorović, Di Wu, and Aaron Rosengren from the Belgrade Astronomical Observatory in Serbia, the University of Arizona, and UC San Diego. Their new paper proposes a dynamic route, going along connected series of arches within so-called space manifolds. These structures, coming into existence from gravitational effects between the Sun and the planets, stretch from the asteroid belt to past Uranus.
The most pronounced of these structures are linked to Jupiter by its strong gravitational pull, explained UC San Diego's press release. They influence the comets around the gas giant as well as smaller space objects called "centaurs," with are like asteroids in size but exhibit the composition of comets.
This animation shows space manifolds over a hundred years. Each frame of the animation shows how the arches and substructures appear over three-year increments.
Credit: Nataša Todorović, Di Wu and Aaron Rosengren/Science Advances
"Space manifolds act as the boundaries of dynamical channels enabling fast transportation into the inner- and outermost reaches of the Solar System," write the researchers. "Besides being an important element in spacecraft navigation and mission design, these manifolds can also explain the apparent erratic nature of comets and their eventual demise."
A closer image of the manifolds showing colliding and escaping objects.
Credit: Science Advances
The researchers discovered the structures by analyzing collected numerical data on the millions of orbits in the Solar System. The scientists figured out how these orbits were contained within known space manifolds. To detect the presences and structure of the space manifolds, the team employed the fast Lyapunov indicator (FLI), used to detect chaos. The scientists ran simulations to compute how the trajectories of particles approaching different planets like Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune would be affected by possible collisions and the manifolds.
While the results are encouraging, the next step is to figure out how these arches can be used by spacecraft for much speedier travel. It's also not clear how similar manifolds work near Earth. Also unclear is how they impact our planet's run-ins with asteroids and meteorites or any of the man-made objects floating up in space near us.
Check out the new paper "The arches of chaos in the Solar System" in Science Advances.
Zoo ethics: free-range prisons or centers for global conservation?
The ethical debate over zoos is going to grow louder. There might be a solution that involves robots.
- Zoos present a dilemma. On the one hand, they benefit conservation and research; on the other hand, placing animals (particularly intelligent ones) in captivity is ethically questionable.
- The more we learn about animals — especially how advanced or intelligent they are — the louder the debate will grow surrounding their captivity.
- Could zoos of the future feature realistic robots in place of animals?
How robots could end animal captivity in zoos and marine parks | Just Might Work www.youtube.com
In 1842, the Zoological Society of London opened up the doors to London Zoo to a very special guest: Queen Victoria. London Zoo is the world's oldest scientific zoo in the world, and the Zoological Society was anxious to see what the most powerful person in the world was to make of their rhinos, elephants, and quaggas (a species of zebra, now extinct). It did not go well.
While most of the tour went swimmingly, it all turned sour when Queen Victoria saw Jenny, the orangutan. This huge and hulking beast, one of the most intelligent of the primates, was the first of its kind to be seen in Europe. As Victoria saw Jenny's deliberate movements and her remarkable range of expressions, the Queen found her "frightful, painfully, disagreeably human." Victoria was quite okay to see herd animals and tiny critters, but the prospect of large, intelligent life caged up for her amusement? She was not amused.
The argument against zoos
Queen Victoria's qualms are not uncommon. Zoos make many of us uneasy. No matter how shiny a ribbon we put on it, ultimately we go to the zoo to derive pleasure from the captivity of animals that were never meant to be behind bars. No matter how large a lion's enclosure, how regularly the penguins are fed, or how attentively a sick giraffe is tended, the fact is that we go to zoos to enjoy the show animals provide us. We reduce them to objects for our enjoyment.
It seems that most people only go to the zoo because it's a fun day out — sort of like an amusement park, except the animals are real rather than teenagers in giant costumes. Few seem to go for a truly educational experience. Instead, they gawp and point.
Philosophers such as Aristotle and David Hume long argued what modern science needed very little effort to prove: animals think and feel. Monkeys experience pain, wallabies nurture their young, and stoats can lay traps for their prey. There is intelligence, sentience, and emotion in the animal world. Is it ethical to lock up creatures like this?
The argument for zoos
However, most zoos today, especially in the developed world, function as massive, well-funded centers for research. Furthermore, they do educate and inspire generations of new conservationists and zoologists, even if that's a small minority of the customers who attend.
Zoos also do their best to minimize the pain and death of their animals, a rather tangible benefit that these animals would not receive in the wild. In a zoo, a zebra gets hay on the menu; in the wild, the zebra itself is on the menu. Maybe captivity isn't so bad, after all.
The biggest and most reputable zoos and aquariums in the world collectively fund over 2500 conservation projects across more than 100 countries to the tune of $160 million, providing experts with the cash they need to do their work. It would be naïve to suggest that the sheer scale of this could be matched by public service announcements or well produced viral videos, alone. In this light, could zoos be seen as the lesser of two evils — a form of collateral damage for the greater good?
This same logic applies to the repulsive idea of trophy hunting. While most of us are horrified, is it not objectively true that if some rich guy pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to a lion conservation project, would that not save far more lions in the long run than the one lion he goes on to shoot?
Robot zoos
The issue that we are faced with today is the same one that Queen Victoria called out in 1842. The more we learn about animal intelligence, the worse we feel about keeping them in zoos. This is particularly true for mammals like primates, dolphins, and whales.
There may be a solution. A company in California created a robot dolphin so realistic that visitors did not know they were watching a robot. (See video above.) Could something like this keep the upside of zoos while eliminating the downside?
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.
Hack your brain for better problem solving
Tips from neuroscience and psychology can make you an expert thinker.
This article was originally published on Big Think Edge.
Problem-solving skills are in demand. Every job posting lists them under must-have qualifications, and every job candidate claims to possess them, par excellence. Young entrepreneurs make solutions to social and global problems the heart of their mission statements, while parents and teachers push for curricula that encourage critical-thinking methods beyond solving for x.
It's ironic then that we continue to cultivate habits that stunt our ability to solve problems. Take, for example, the modern expectation to be "always on." We push ourselves to always be working, always be producing, always be parenting, always be promoting, always be socializing, always be in the know, always be available, always be doing. It's too much, and when things are always on all the time, we deplete the mental resources we need to truly engage with challenges.
If we're serious about solving problems, at work and in our personal lives, then we need to become more adept at tuning out so we can hone in.
Solve problems with others (occasionally)
A side effect of being always on is that we are rarely alone. We're connected through the ceaseless chirps of friends texting, social media buzzing, and colleagues pinging us for advice everywhere we go. In some ways, this is a boon. Modern technologies mediate near endless opportunities for collective learning and social problem-solving. Yet, such cooperation has its limits according to a 2018 study out of Harvard Business School.
In the study, participants were divided into three group types and asked to solve traveling salesman problems. The first group type had to work on the problems individually. The second group type exchanged notes after every round of problem-solving while the third collaborated after every three rounds.
The researchers found that lone problem-solvers invented a diverse range of potential solutions. However, their solutions varied wildly in quality, with some being true light bulb moments and others burnt-out duds. Conversely, the always-on group took advantage of their collective learning to tackle more complex problems more effectively. But social influence often led these groups to prematurely converge around a single idea and abandon potentially brilliant outliers.
It was the intermittent collaborators who landed on the Goldilocks strategy. By interacting less frequently, individual group members had more time to nurture their ideas so the best could shine. But when they gathered together, the group managed to improve the overall quality of their solutions thanks to collective learning.
In presenting their work, the study's authors question the value of always-on culture—especially our submissiveness to intrusions. "As we replace those sorts of intermittent cycles with always-on technologies, we might be diminishing our capacity to solve problems well," Ethan Bernstein, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the study's authors, said in a press release.
These findings suggest we should schedule time to ruminate with our inner geniuses and consult the wisdom of the crowd. Rather than dividing our day between productivity output and group problem-solving sessions, we must also create space to focus on problems in isolation. This strategy provides the best of both worlds. It allows us to formulate our ideas before social pressure can push us to abandon them. But it doesn't preclude the group knowledge required to refine those ideas.
And the more distractions you can block out or turn off, the more working memory you'll have to direct at the problem.
A problem-solving booster
The next step is to dedicate time to not dealing with problems. Counterintuitive as it may seem, setting a troublesome task aside and letting your subconscious take a crack at it improves your conscious efforts later.
How should we fill these down hours? That's up to you, but research has shown time and again that healthier habits produce hardier minds. This is especially true regarding executive functions—a catchall term that includes a person's ability to self-control, meet goals, think flexibly, and, yes, solve problems.
"Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluid-intelligence tasks. These tasks test the ability to reason quickly and think abstractly, improvising off previously learned material to solve a new problem. Essentially, exercise improves a whole host of abilities prized in the classroom and at work," writes John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist at the University of Washington.
One such study, published in the Frontiers in Neuroscience, analyzed data collected from more than 4,000 British adults. After controlling for variables, it found a bidirectional relationship between exercise and higher levels of executive function over time. Another study, this one published in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, compared fitness data from 128 adults with brain scans taken as they were dual-tasking. Its findings showed regular exercisers sported more active executive regions.
Research also demonstrates a link between problem-solving, healthy diets, and proper sleep habits. Taken altogether, these lifestyle choices also help people manage their stress—which is known to impair problem-solving and creativity.
Of course, it can be difficult to untangle the complex relationship between cause and effect. Do people with healthy life habits naturally enjoy strong executive functions? Or do those habits bolster their mental fitness throughout their lives?
That's not an easy question to answer, but the Frontiers in Neuroscience study researchers hypothesize that it's a positive feedback loop. They posit that good sleep, nutritious food, and regular exercise fortify our executive functions. In turn, more potent executive decisions invigorate healthier life choices. And those healthy life choices—you see where this is going.
And while life choices are ultimately up to individuals, organizations have a supportive role to play. They can foster cultures that protect off-hours for relaxing, incentivize healthier habits with PTO, and prompt workers to take time for exercise beyond the usual keyboard calisthenics.
Nor would such initiatives be entirely selfless. They come with the added benefit of boosting a workforce's collective problem-solving capabilities.
Live and learn and learn some more
Another advantage of tuning out is the advantage to pursue life-long learning opportunities. People who engage in creative or problem-solving activities in their downtime—think playing music, puzzles, and even board games—show improved executive functions and mental acuity as they age. In other words, by learning to enjoy the act of problem-solving, you may enhance your ability to do so.
Similarly, lifelong learners are often interdisciplinary thinkers. By diving into various subjects, they can come to understand the nuances of different skills and bodies of knowledge to see when ideas from one field may provide a solution to a problem in another. That doesn't mean lifelong learners must become experts in every discipline. On the contrary, they are far more likely to understand where the limits of their knowledge lie. But those self-perceived horizons can also provide insight into where collaboration is necessary and when to follow someone else's lead.
In this way, lifelong learning can be key to problem-solving in both business and our personal lives. It pushes us toward self-improvement, gives us an understanding of how things work, hints at what's possible, and, above all, gives us permission to tune out and focus on what matters.
Cultivate lifelong learning at your organization with lessons 'For Business' from Big Think Edge. At Edge, more than 350 experts, academics, and entrepreneurs come together to teach essential skills in career development and lifelong learning. Heighten your problem-solving aptitude with lessons such as:
- Make Room for Innovation: Key Characteristics of Innovative Companies, with Lisa Bodell, Founder and CEO, FutureThink, and Author, Why Simple Wins
- Use Design Thinking: An Alternative Approach to Tackling the World's Greatest Problems, with Tim Brown, CEO and President, IDEO
- The Power of Onlyness: Give Your People Permission to Co-Create the Future, with Nilofer Merchant, Marketing Expert and Author, The Power of Onlyness
- How to Build a Talent-First Organization: Put People Before Numbers, with Ram Charan, Business Consultant
- The Science of Successful Things: Case Studies in Product Hits and Flops, with Derek Thompson, Senior Editor, The Atlantic, and Author, Hit Makers
Request a demo today!
How AI learned to paint like Rembrandt
The Rijksmuseum employed an AI to repaint lost parts of Rembrandt's "The Night Watch." Here's how they did it.
