You hear this, or something to this effect, all the time, yet you hear it more often and with more urgency during an election year. If not now, when? It’s the time for change. Break with the past, hope for the future. Before it’s too late!
Okay, it’s now. No, it’s not now, now was then, but now it’s after that. I get asked about this all the time (I being the blogger writing in the Professor’s spot, but I’d be surprised if he was not also asked this question all of the time. In fact, considering how often I am asked what he would say about it, let’s just say he got asked this all the time and let the fact-checkers get a time machine and try to prove us wrong). Anyway, the question is, what is “now?” Is there really such a thing, and how long is it?
I have heard many people drone on who obviously had no answer, but few who could admit as much. Instead they hide behind the intellectual posing of “the philosophical approach.” They might say there is no true now, or it can’t be defined but we know what it is, or it’s real but it’s gone before you can label it. Of course these simple non-answers had hours of fancy words added in the hope the listener would give up and simply concede the talker’s intellectual superiority. The Professor had little use for such answers that served to prevent real answers, for the people who plumped themselves up pronouncing such alleged wisdom, and for the poor saps who shook their heads admiring such nonsense.
Now I’ve painted myself into a corner, it’s time to answer. Let’s start with what we do know.
First of all, now is a human term. While future and past are easy to define as simple words, present isn’t. It is more about the inner workings of the viewer. How fast do your neurons (or your microcircuits) work? How long can they maintain new input in the active processor. Now can be defined as no shorter than the shortest duration event you can sense and no longer than the longest duration of a “momentary” thought or act of consciousness. The cool thing about this is anyone can define now as “my now,” and since Relativity pins measurement of speed, time, length, and sequence on the state of the observer, why not make now dependent on the observer’s inner state? This answer also may be true to the origin, development and usage of the term, but that doesn’t mean physics can’t investigate and give “now” a real definition and length. We could talk about “Planck Time Interval” which means the smallest amount of time measurable (regardless of whether you have the technology to measure it or not). We can go one better than that, continuing in a quantum theory kind of way: If there are time particles then there is a discrete smallest amount of time, surely that trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth yadda yadda yadda of a second is the length of “NOW.”
The past stretches back about 14 Billion years, if we use the Big Bang as a marker. What we call time began then, so it’s a good choice, although in a greater scheme of things, who knows. The future may go on without limit, even if the Universe turns off in a cold dead state. Even if the universe eventually reverses it hasn’t yet so we’re not at the mid-point so the future is longer than 14 Billion years. Best data to date is against this possibility, that changed a few years ago, so the future was shorter in the past if you follow my drift. The Universe has a past and future, and NOW is any point you choose to use from which to look back and forth. If the whole thing is curved on itself the future may be the past… And if the Universe is in a larger realm, what time is it there?
So much time and it’s all being hogged by the future and the past, especially the future. What does that leave us now? Basically, now is simply the borderline between the past and the future. Don’t feel sorry for now as if it’s been shortchanged, the future and the past are large areas on the graph, now is the borderline. It needs no area, but without it there is no future nor past: If it isn’t defined neither are the other two. Now I scoff at your pretentious stories of the past and self-serving warnings of the future, I have humbled them now with the simple proclamation that Now is all that counts. (you can sing “Shananananana Live For Today” now)
Special Relativity made time a part of a grander space, the 4th very physical dimension. It isn’t real, it’s simply that which keeps everything from happening at once, or at least to seem as if it isn’t happening at once. It is just a filing system. To make things understandable we file them as past and future, with Now separating them. To simplify the mess even more we name lots of potential nows all over the past and future to show how things could have been or could be more organized for our comprehension all over time.
The world is becoming more complicated every moment, and technology provides more sensory overload than could have been imagined just a generation ago, even as they complained of how complex things were now. Yes, now your lives may seem incredibly overloaded and confused, but trust me, things would be confused beyond human comprehension without NOW to keep things organized.
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