This mindblowing experiment
will only take a few minutes...
...whatever that means.
In 1915, Albert Einstein published
his general theory of relativity
which changed, changes, and will change
the way we perceive time.
In this groundbreaking theory,
he proposed that the laws of physics
are the same for all
non-accelerating observers.
This basically explains why, if you were
to watch a car drive past you,
you would interpret the car's passengers
as moving at the same speed as the car,
since their speed is relative to your position
as an observer on still ground.
Meanwhile, inside the car, the
passengers feel like stationary objects,
since their motion matches the car's
motion, relative to the outside world.
But while Einstein's theory of relative motion
could be applied to all objects in the universe,
he also realized that one
exception to relativity was light.
Light always moves at a constant speed.
These two principles led Einstein to
conceive of a link between time and space,
also known as spacetime.
And one of its tricky implications is that
the perception of how time passes
can be different between two observers
depending on how much faster
one is moving compared to the other.
So, if it's possible for two observers to have
two accurate perspectives of time's passing,
but for those perspectives to be different,
Oddly enough, they're both right.
After all, the fact that different
time zones exist are enough proof
that your watch and someone's
watch across the world
will read different times
every second of the day.
We're inclined to think of the passing
of time as objective or universal,
since humans have all more or less
agreed on the same system
to organize our busy lives, and to be
on the same page with our neighbors
either next door, or a few countries over!
But while time is a convenient tool for
keeping track of the past, present, and future,
the true nature of time is trickier to grasp
once you realize that the past,
present, and future could all exist at once.
When you look up at the sky, you might
be able to point out Proxima Centauri.
After the Sun, Proxima Centauri is
the closest star to Earth,
and it's only about 4 light years away.
So the light you see now,
is actually 4 years old in our time.
If Proxima Centauri exploded, we
wouldn't know about it until 4 years later.
That's because the speed of light is constant,
no matter where you are in the universe!
Another thing you need to know is that
the faster you move, the slower time does.
This explains how astronaut
Scott Kelly spent a year in space
and came back to Earth
13 milliseconds younger than his twin.
Now, with these two examples, let's put an
astronaut on a planet that's 4 light years away.
That means his present is
unfolding 4 years ahead of you.
Anything you do now on
Earth is already in his past.
Put simply, the past, present,
and future all exist at once.
Now, before you have an
existential crisis, there's a theory
that might make living in the past, present,
and future all at once, a little easier.
It's called moving spotlight theory,
and it basically argues that
there is only one absolute present,
which changes moment by moment
as if a spotlight is moving over it.
So with that information, you can begin to see
how the passage of time might be an illusion.
There's no single objective past,
objective present, or objective future.
The illusion of time is
crafted by our memories,
and our experiences,
and our upcoming plans,
which help us organize our life
into a neat sequence of events.
But depending on where you are,
or how fast you're moving,
that sequence will be very, very different.
So whether you're New Age or nostalgic,
or if you just prefer the present moment.
don't worry, there's a place for you...
somewhere in the universe...
it might take you
hundreds of years to get there,
but if you move fast enough,
you'll get there in no time!
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