Friday, December 5, 2008

Do You Know What Time It Is?

Particle physicist Professor Brian Cox asks, 'What time is it?' It's a simple question and it sounds like it has a simple answer. But do we really know what it is that we're asking?



Brian visits the ancient Mayan pyramids in Mexico where the Maya built temples to time. He finds out that a day is never 24 hours and meets Earth's very own Director of Time. He journeys to the beginning of time, and goes beyond within the realms of string theory, and explores the very limit of time. He discovers that we not only travel through time at the speed of light, but the experience we feel as the passing of time could be an illusion.





More documentaries like this...

What We Still Don't Know

Time - A Documentary

An Experiment to Save the World

The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that absolutely blew my mind. One of the greatest, most thought provoking documentaries I have ever seen. I wish it was like six hours longer. But then again what is 6 hours anyway?

One of the largest questions I was left with, during the final moments of the video, is if space-time can be grainy and the future isn't predetermined, does the past still stick around? If we are building upon these blocks, then the past should still be there theoretically in some dimension, a dimension we can't access currently. Basically, I'm wondering if this theory would allow for the possibility to travel back in time. But then this raises even farther questions because would that then erase the grains that have followed the point we travel back to. Would you be stuck in that "time?"

Whew... not even sure if anyone is going to read this, but I just needed to get some things out of my system.

Anonymous said...

Take einstein at face value, thats of course open to interpretation like everything thats written down ^^.
Sure, that place in time already exists, you know, the one near the water.
That doesnt mean I'm there already at that exact spot in spacetime at coordinates x, y, z and t.
Sure t is pretty easy to predict, since we're floating around in that direction at the speed of light.
No amount of wiggeling our legs or flapping our arms is going to change that speed and direction.
That only means we can pretty much predict where we will be at coordinate t. But where we will be at that time and what we will be doing is not so predictable. Since we are constantly wiggeling our legs and flapping our arms to change speed and direction in all the other dimensions as we see fit.
That is, if we are not floating out in deep space at a fixed speed and direction, where doing all that wiggeling and flapping does not have all that much effect ^^;
This is pretty intuitive to our modern way of thinking, at least I think so.

I dont see anything really counter intuitive about a set future when it comes to me existing or not, but where I will be and what I will be doing right there and than is in no way set because I can change my speed and direction at will and so can you :)

So both grainy digital universe and analogue universe can both feel right in my opinion, concerning a non set future.
So we will just have to wait and see which is the truth in the end. Matrixy computer simulation universe or fantasy made up continuous analogue universe.
I perfer the last one since it has more infinities in it :P
Thats just a personal view though ^^