The Order of Time

Linford Christy with the sculpture called
"The B of the Bang"
(Now sadly sold for scrap.)

Here are my thoughts following listening to Benjamin Cumberbatch reading 'The Order of Time' by Carlo Rovelli.

There are different types of time, as there are different types of 'love' (or snow).

It is important that we define time to understand how we are using it.   St Augustine noted that time in in the mind, and that some 'time' travels quickly, and sometimes drags.  

Keppler's laws highlight that all planets slow down and speed up as the pass through their annual elliptical path round the sun.  The earth rotates around the Sun in one earthly year.  So we are all speeding up and slowing down, as if on a roller-coaster without realising it (explains a lot).

Speed of travel, and gravity affect the quantum mechanics of time.  If I am on a high mountain, time passes more quickly than if I am by the Dead Sea (ie below sea level), (though Rovelli does not explain in detail why this might be, or reference the experiments that show this.)  

From the perspective of thermodynamic time, entropy is the best guide to measurement.  If we set up a CCTV camera on an empty room, the only change we will notice will be the deterioration of things, as matter moves from a more complex, or ordered state, to a less ordered one (ultimately dust).  

These thoughts fed my fantasy about the big bang, where the planets were launched into the universe at enormous rotational speeds.  Every rotation of the earth (which defines the length of a day) would initially have been be a matter of a few seconds.  'Life' on earth would be as if on fast-forward, running at a frenetic pace.  As entropy acts on the earth, the globe slows, following the decent of the inverse exponential curve.   In this way millions of years may pass in a matter of earthly years.  We assume that time has always ticked at its current rate, but it has not.

A descending exponential curve depicting the
slowing down of the earths rotations.- 

My other thought which links to the big bang, is the thought that the major physical processes going on about us ensuring that everything decomposes, is broken down and is chopped into fine particles.  Mountains are being ground down to sand, and sand to dust.  Dust returns to atoms.  From time to time, mountains are thrust up, but this is time limited.  Eventually they will be brought low, and the whole world will begin to look like the Netherlands.  

But isn't this how it all began?  A fast expanse of nothingness, except that atoms, and subatomic particles everywhere; these evenly distributed in a mist.  Nothing is stable in the universe.  Everything is in motion, and the mist begins to become unsatisfied.  The balance of gravity is upset and particles pull on each other.  Like as if a giant reset button has been pressed, zero become one.  The end of infinity means things return back to the beginning and start all over again.  How many times has this happened?

For the materialist, if you ask what happens when we die?  The reply is, "it is the same as before I was born. Before I was born I did not exist.  I have no recollection of existence.  I will return to that state.  The candle is extinguished."  

Eastern traditions retort that we did exist before life, but in a different 'life'.  I also wonder whether we had an existence before life.  I'm not sure what it might have been, but if there is a wonderful existence to look forward to, that is out of time, why not before time too?