Suzanne theorizes: Time really IS relative.
I'll tell you what got me thinking about Time with a capital T. (Besides the fact that I'm on a book deadline, of course.) It was the announcement that TPTB added one second to the atomic clock at the beginning of 2006.
Not an hour. Not even a minute. But one second.
Needless to say, that boggled my mind.
Funny thing about time: No matter how it's measured, there never seems to be enough of it. We all know that time flies. Time drags. Time is precious. Time is money. Time is saved. Time is wasted. Time waits for no man or woman. And time is relative.
We are a society seemingly obsessed with time. But that's nothing new. Most ancient cultures had at least some people preoccupied with measuring time, including ice-age hunters 20,000 years ago and the ancient Sumerians back in 5000 BCE.
The ancient Egyptians devised a 365-day calendar based on the rising of the star Sirius next to the sun, which just happened to coincide with the annual inundation of the Nile. As early as 3500 BCE they also used obelisks — "shadow clocks" — to divide their day into hours. Some two thousand years later they created water clocks, so they could measure the nighttime hours as well. (I can guarantee the "dripping" would have kept me awake!)
Of course, the real revolution in timekeeping came in the early 14th century with the Italians and their large mechanical tower clocks. Spring-powered clocks were invented around 1500, and, in 1656, a Dutch scientist made the first pendulum clock. By the early 18th century the pendulum clock had been refined so it was accurate to one second per day, then to one-hundredth of a second a day.
In the 1920s quartz clocks were developed and then later the atomic clock mentioned at the beginning of these ramblings. I think you'll be as relieved as I am to find out that the atomic clock is currently accurate to 30 billionths of a second per year. (Kind of makes that one added second loom a little larger, doesn't it?)
I was an English Lit major in college, so I wouldn't dream of tackling the subject of time as it relates to sophisticated mathematics and science, i.e. the cosmos, nano-technology, string theory, space travel. Time is space. Time is warped. Time and Motion. Time reversal. Sidereal Time. Ephemeris Time. Atomic Time.
Arrrrggg! Makes my head hurt. In "The Time of Your Life," Tony Robbins suggests that "time is emotion," and I have to agree with him. If I'm doing something I love — whether it's writing a scene that seems to flow, or reading a wonderful book, or watching "24" (my new favorite TV show just discovered in season – er, Day five), or standing in front of a masterpiece in a museum, or talking to my son on the phone — time feels like it flies by!
On the other hand, don't we all know the feeling of time dragging its feet when we're waiting to hear the results of medical tests, or the dentist is drilling in our mouths, or we're waiting in line at the license bureau?
There have even been a few times in my life — both good times and bad times — when time seemed to stand still, ceased to exist, had no meaning.
It turns out, my friends, that time really is relative.
So, the question I'm asking today: What makes time fly for you?
Cheers!
Suzanne
Not an hour. Not even a minute. But one second.
Needless to say, that boggled my mind.
Funny thing about time: No matter how it's measured, there never seems to be enough of it. We all know that time flies. Time drags. Time is precious. Time is money. Time is saved. Time is wasted. Time waits for no man or woman. And time is relative.
We are a society seemingly obsessed with time. But that's nothing new. Most ancient cultures had at least some people preoccupied with measuring time, including ice-age hunters 20,000 years ago and the ancient Sumerians back in 5000 BCE.
The ancient Egyptians devised a 365-day calendar based on the rising of the star Sirius next to the sun, which just happened to coincide with the annual inundation of the Nile. As early as 3500 BCE they also used obelisks — "shadow clocks" — to divide their day into hours. Some two thousand years later they created water clocks, so they could measure the nighttime hours as well. (I can guarantee the "dripping" would have kept me awake!)
Of course, the real revolution in timekeeping came in the early 14th century with the Italians and their large mechanical tower clocks. Spring-powered clocks were invented around 1500, and, in 1656, a Dutch scientist made the first pendulum clock. By the early 18th century the pendulum clock had been refined so it was accurate to one second per day, then to one-hundredth of a second a day.
In the 1920s quartz clocks were developed and then later the atomic clock mentioned at the beginning of these ramblings. I think you'll be as relieved as I am to find out that the atomic clock is currently accurate to 30 billionths of a second per year. (Kind of makes that one added second loom a little larger, doesn't it?)
I was an English Lit major in college, so I wouldn't dream of tackling the subject of time as it relates to sophisticated mathematics and science, i.e. the cosmos, nano-technology, string theory, space travel. Time is space. Time is warped. Time and Motion. Time reversal. Sidereal Time. Ephemeris Time. Atomic Time.
Arrrrggg! Makes my head hurt. In "The Time of Your Life," Tony Robbins suggests that "time is emotion," and I have to agree with him. If I'm doing something I love — whether it's writing a scene that seems to flow, or reading a wonderful book, or watching "24" (my new favorite TV show just discovered in season – er, Day five), or standing in front of a masterpiece in a museum, or talking to my son on the phone — time feels like it flies by!
On the other hand, don't we all know the feeling of time dragging its feet when we're waiting to hear the results of medical tests, or the dentist is drilling in our mouths, or we're waiting in line at the license bureau?
There have even been a few times in my life — both good times and bad times — when time seemed to stand still, ceased to exist, had no meaning.
It turns out, my friends, that time really is relative.
So, the question I'm asking today: What makes time fly for you?
Cheers!
Suzanne
posted at 7:19 AM
