Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: forward thinking. Welcome to forward thinking, everybody. My name is
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I am joined here by my co
Speaker 1: hosts of They are second to none. Would you introduce yourselves?
Speaker 1: Not after that? Come on, Hi, I'm Lauren foc Obama,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick here with our co host Punny Boo boo,
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. We are we're talking about time
Speaker 1: today and what is time? And why is it difficult
Speaker 1: to really explain what time is? And why are we
Speaker 1: doing a podcast about it? Anyway? Well, hey, y'all, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you a question. Sure, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: just put your put your thinking helmets on you, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll do. Don't get hurt. Um. Before a second passes,
Speaker 1: half a second has to pass, right, yes, the full
Speaker 1: two of them? Actually yeah, I cannot pass until half
Speaker 1: a second has been right, but before half of that
Speaker 1: second passes, a quarter of the seconds two of them
Speaker 1: in fact, right, and so you can't get to the
Speaker 1: half a second until the quarter is right. Sure, Let's
Speaker 1: repeat this process. Okay, does time ever passed? Having down
Speaker 1: the the amount of time saying like so we're asking
Speaker 1: what the smallest unit, what what the quantum particle of
Speaker 1: tina is? Yeah, you kind of have to because I mean,
Speaker 1: or is there one? Well, well, for instance, we all
Speaker 1: remember I don't, well maybe you don't. I remember from
Speaker 1: my days in the physical science classes and elementary school
Speaker 1: being told that the atom was the basic building block
Speaker 1: of matter, and that that was essentially as essentially as
Speaker 1: small as you can go. We're lying to children. Even
Speaker 1: at that time they knew. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: we discovered sub atomic particles. Since I'm not that old,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to pollute your innocent little brain the
Speaker 1: idea of quarks and yeah, bossons and things of that nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's they just didn't want me to really understand particle physics,
Speaker 1: I guess. And maybe like learning that Santa Claus isn't
Speaker 1: real what Joe, I don't know, physics is like learning
Speaker 1: that Santa Claus is real personally. But anyway, all right,
Speaker 1: Well that the point magic is possible, kids, The point
Speaker 1: being that you know, you learned that you can divide
Speaker 1: things into ever smaller amounts, but there has to at
Speaker 1: some point be yeah, the bottom level, right, people are
Speaker 1: coming up with strings and stuff like that, right, strength theory, sure,
Speaker 1: and so theoretically, based upon our understanding of the universe
Speaker 1: as it stands right now, the standard model of the universe,
Speaker 1: we consider the smallest theoretically measurable length to be the
Speaker 1: Planck distance. What distance? The Planck Planck length? Alright, So
Speaker 1: Planck length is, in theory, the smallest measurable distance that
Speaker 1: we would ever be able to measure. This is assuming
Speaker 1: that we were ever able to build a measuring device
Speaker 1: precise enough to measure a plock. There is nothing that
Speaker 1: we have remotely capable of measuring a distance that's small.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that you could not measure anything
Speaker 1: smaller than that. Ever, it's the smallest distance possible, the
Speaker 1: plank distance you're talking about. Let's break this down to
Speaker 1: the physics this so the plant distance, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the it's the shortest distance I believe if I'm corrected,
Speaker 1: that makes any sense in the standard model of physics.
Speaker 1: That's right, going going shorter? You the math doesn't work, right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Our our model breaks down, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: doesn't fit anymore. And so what what is pluck time?
Speaker 1: How does that relate to plant distance? Pluck time is
Speaker 1: the amount of time it would take a photon to
Speaker 1: travel across plot distance at the speed of light. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's what's plank distance? Pluck distance all at one point. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like one point six times ten to the negative
Speaker 1: thirty five meters. So it makes Yeah, I run into
Speaker 1: that kind figure all the time. They huge orders of magnitude,
Speaker 1: smaller than anything we could detect in any way. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it would make a nanometer seem enormous by comparison. Right,
Speaker 1: a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. And then
Speaker 1: so you imagine something going the fastest a thing can
Speaker 1: possibly go across that distance exactly. That's that that makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: plock time. If you if you're going at the speed
Speaker 1: of light, nothing, as far as we know, according to
Speaker 1: our model of the universe, can move faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of lights. That's as fast as you can possibly go.
Speaker 1: So as fast as you can possibly go across the
Speaker 1: shortest distance you could possibly go, therefore must be the
Speaker 1: shortest amount of time possible with the smallest unit of tik. Well,
Speaker 1: bringing to our essentially flawed mathematical understanding of the universe. Yes,
Speaker 1: but but I mean, that does make sense if you
Speaker 1: if you're saying, this is the fastest anything can go,
Speaker 1: and this is the smallest amount of space that's possible,
Speaker 1: then having something travel that space would have to be
Speaker 1: the smallest amount of time by definition, because you can't
Speaker 1: you can't go faster, and you can't be smaller. Therefore
Speaker 1: that unit of time has to be the smallest amount
Speaker 1: of time possible. Okay, so does this concept help us
Speaker 1: define time? Because no, no, because we're because how do
Speaker 1: we think on that scale? That scale? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: great for math. Mathematically, it's fantastic because again it fits
Speaker 1: our standard model of the universe. But in any meaningful
Speaker 1: discussion that you know, I can't come up to you,
Speaker 1: Joe and say, hey, how much plucked time has passed?
Speaker 1: It's the last time we chatted. That's not meaningful, right,
Speaker 1: So we got to figure out another way to define time.
Speaker 1: How did Einstein do it? The standard story is that
Speaker 1: he basically said, and we're paraphrasing here, that time is
Speaker 1: what clock's measure, which is kind of a joke. It's
Speaker 1: a circular. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a little
Speaker 1: it's a joke. On the fact that for some reason,
Speaker 1: we can't seem to define time in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't include the concept of time. All our definitions are circular,
Speaker 1: right right at just like a clock. Oh, I know,
Speaker 1: I'd get one now, Lauren just shakes her head disapprovingly.
Speaker 1: But there there are concepts like this that are that
Speaker 1: are useful. But you know, there it makes them difficult
Speaker 1: to talk about. You know, how do you the old one? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you define quality without invoking the idea of quality? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it becomes this whole This again a circular argument. If
Speaker 1: everything is subjective, If if this thing that we experience
Speaker 1: is essentially subjective, then how do you define it? And
Speaker 1: if it's if it's a point where you know, none
Speaker 1: of us can can easily explain how this stuff happens,
Speaker 1: Like how is time possible for our understanding? Time is
Speaker 1: something that moves in one direction, it's a sequence of events.
Speaker 1: In fact, Newton proposed that it was just a series
Speaker 1: of moments that would stack on to one another, that
Speaker 1: was standard across everything, because at that time there was
Speaker 1: no reason to believe other wise that you know, the
Speaker 1: time as it passed on Earth is the same as
Speaker 1: time as it passes anywhere else, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: where you are, what you're doing. It's this sequence of
Speaker 1: events that continues on until infinity. Yeah, because he never
Speaker 1: wasn't until Einstein that we started talking about how how
Speaker 1: space and time are kind of part of the same
Speaker 1: fabric and that they're fudged around by things like gravity
Speaker 1: and speed and all that fun stuff. Well, so I've
Speaker 1: got here a pretty interesting working not a definition, but
Speaker 1: but a place to start when thinking about Okay, this
Speaker 1: is from a Nova transcript I've got here and it's
Speaker 1: Peter Gallison of Harvard University UM, and what he says
Speaker 1: in this program is, um, we're always looking for things
Speaker 1: that repeat over and over again, and that repetition, that
Speaker 1: cycle of things forms a clock. I can understand. That's
Speaker 1: all time becomes is some repetitive process, something we can count,
Speaker 1: like you know, for like the four seasons or the sun,
Speaker 1: the sun seeming to come up over the horizon sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So that's interesting to me because what that
Speaker 1: seems to suggest is that while it's not circular in
Speaker 1: that it doesn't rely on the idea of time to
Speaker 1: define time, it does make time utterly subjective. Like we've
Speaker 1: talked about in a previous episode, you know about the
Speaker 1: physics of relativity and time being actually subjective. It's truly
Speaker 1: an experience. Yeah, Like, for instance, if you were if
Speaker 1: you lived on a different planet, if you had never
Speaker 1: lived on Earth, if you lived on a different planet
Speaker 1: that had a different uh cycle, if the day night
Speaker 1: cycle took place. Maybe it's a planet spun faster or
Speaker 1: around the sun. Yeah, so maybe maybe it's let's say,
Speaker 1: let's say, well beyond that, I mean, but that would
Speaker 1: all depend upon the size of the planet, right, So anyway,
Speaker 1: let's say that, let's say that it's a twenty hour day,
Speaker 1: not twenty four hour day. Your concept of a day
Speaker 1: would be different from my concept of a day. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you were born somehow just floating in space with
Speaker 1: no actual guiding experience, then day and night would be
Speaker 1: meaningless to you entirely. You would have to track time
Speaker 1: some other way. In fact, I kind of wonder about that.
Speaker 1: Let's say that somehow, as a thought experiment, you were
Speaker 1: born in the middle of space. You're just floating free there.
Speaker 1: You've got everything you need to survive. But but how
Speaker 1: would you Yeah, you're you're in two thousand one. Uh.
Speaker 1: Also also strock Tostra is just playing constantly in the background. No,
Speaker 1: nor so you're in the right. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: your you're put into the zone that that is that?
Speaker 1: What Lauren? Do you know I have? I have absolutely no, Okay,
Speaker 1: Superman too anyway, the yeah, your general's odd. But General
Speaker 1: z Odd wasn't alone. He had other people there. He
Speaker 1: could he could track time by the number of times
Speaker 1: his his idiotic uh yeah, how many times he grunted.
Speaker 1: That's how he tracks time. But no, no, if you
Speaker 1: were if you were suspended in space and you you
Speaker 1: aren't on a planet, you're not in in you know,
Speaker 1: orbiting some sort of other body, how would you would
Speaker 1: have to be something internal? If you don't have anything
Speaker 1: external around you, then you would turn to the number
Speaker 1: of times that your heart beats, or or the number
Speaker 1: of times the blink you blink, or etcetera. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: just just any and if you have a iPod up
Speaker 1: there the number of times blink whetity two comes on shuffle. No, no,
Speaker 1: this is kind of interesting. I like that you object
Speaker 1: to my choice of band, which was only based upon
Speaker 1: the fact the idea of blinking. I get very well
Speaker 1: what you did there and Joe is bothered by all
Speaker 1: the small things. As it turns out, well, no, it's
Speaker 1: interesting if you try to look up, you know, look
Speaker 1: up scientific definitions of what is a second in terms
Speaker 1: of science, it's some it's you know, they'll say, like
Speaker 1: it's the time it takes uh this atom to do this,
Speaker 1: and it's some huge random number that they use as
Speaker 1: the constant to base that on, which, to me is
Speaker 1: is kind of one of those funny indicators that are like, oh,
Speaker 1: second is completely arbitrary, just like what it's Our day
Speaker 1: length got divided into some relatively stable, manageable pieces, manageable
Speaker 1: pieces like hours and minutes and seconds, and that's what
Speaker 1: a second is. There's no second in the universe right right,
Speaker 1: And our measurement of time here on Earth is all
Speaker 1: based on the oscillation of very small things. It's based
Speaker 1: on on waveforms that we can more or less detect
Speaker 1: through mechanical means. Sure, like like the vibration of an
Speaker 1: ion that's cool to near absolute zero. Yes, that's what
Speaker 1: the quantum clock is based off of. The quantum clock
Speaker 1: measures time, or the way we measure time with the
Speaker 1: quantum clock. Is we super cool? A an aluminum ion
Speaker 1: to near absolute zero. Absolute zero is a concept where
Speaker 1: we essentially have no molecular movement. Right There's there's nothing
Speaker 1: moving because really heat, when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: is molecules moving around, and the hotter things are, the
Speaker 1: more they move around in general. So when you've got
Speaker 1: going to near absolute zero, there's almost no molecular movement.
Speaker 1: You measure the the vibrations of this alunium ion, which
Speaker 1: are at a very regular rate, and you're using a
Speaker 1: very very precise ultra violet laser that's doing this at
Speaker 1: an incredible frequency. So every second, it's measuring this hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of times in order to determine, uh specifically,
Speaker 1: how long a second is. And the idea is that
Speaker 1: by doing that you have the world's most accurate clock,
Speaker 1: which is accurate to what one second for every three
Speaker 1: point seven million years. You're not gonna you're not gonna
Speaker 1: worry about losing one for three seven billion years. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good clock. But it's so funny because it's the
Speaker 1: most accurate possible way of measuring this utterly arbitrary quantity.
Speaker 1: Well it's arbitrary, but it's still meaning. It's it's meaning
Speaker 1: and especially since I mean, your your average risk watch,
Speaker 1: which works off of a quartz crystal um, is going
Speaker 1: to lose maybe fifteen seconds a month. Really high precision
Speaker 1: expensive watches lose maybe ten seconds a year. To be ere,
Speaker 1: I would have wasted those anyway, I don't really consider
Speaker 1: them losing because I what am I gonna do with
Speaker 1: those fifteen seconds? Probably, you know, maybe download another movie,
Speaker 1: go on a tangent on a podcast, could do that,
Speaker 1: could do that, maybe make a reference to to another
Speaker 1: another pop band, just to watch jos reaction. But yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's again we're getting back to the whole idea. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's an arbitrary amount, and if you were to step
Speaker 1: outside the human experience, it's largely meaningless. But inside the
Speaker 1: human experience it's meaningful. I mean, just like other other
Speaker 1: ways that we've tweaked time are meaningful to us in
Speaker 1: a specific context, Like Joe. I mean, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a something that we do with time every year that
Speaker 1: I know you're just dying to talk about. It's something
Speaker 1: that we introduced, Oh run around World War One? For
Speaker 1: some reason? Why don't we talk about that? Okay? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: I assume you're talking about daylight saving time. Thank you Joe.
Speaker 1: By the way, for all you listening, it is saving singular. Right.
Speaker 1: That sounds totally wrong, doesn't stop Joe from saying savings
Speaker 1: every time he talks to me about this. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about daylight saving time a lot. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: story of this goes, and this is the funny part,
Speaker 1: because hey, Lauren, how did daylight saving time get started?
Speaker 1: Do you know? I think it had something to do
Speaker 1: with with with farmers needing extra time in the mornings.
Speaker 1: There you go, there you go, farmers. Everybody thinks this.
Speaker 1: I thought this, Jonathan, didn't you think this. I thought
Speaker 1: it was because our robot overlords came down and told
Speaker 1: us to switch our clocks back. No, you're you're totally
Speaker 1: everybody gets this wrong. This is that's I thought exactly.
Speaker 1: It was farmers, farmers need extra times, something about yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not farms. Huh. No, apparently that Well, from what
Speaker 1: I've read, daylight's saving time or something like it had
Speaker 1: been proposed a bunch of times by people throughout the years,
Speaker 1: but the first time it was widely implemented was during
Speaker 1: World War One, when um various powers on each side,
Speaker 1: like I think, great Britain and Germany implemented daylight saving
Speaker 1: time in order to save energy, specifically coal. That coal
Speaker 1: and energy were about the same thing. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: even candles were pretty pretty expensive, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: wax was not easy to come by. Well, yeah, no
Speaker 1: matter what, they were using electric lights or whatever it. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were burning them into the evening hours and that
Speaker 1: was wasting energy during wartime, Yeah, which you could use
Speaker 1: that energy to kill people rather than which is much better. Well,
Speaker 1: during war, it's kind of necessary at least to the
Speaker 1: people fighting the war. That or maybe not fighting, but
Speaker 1: the people waging the war. Yeah, that they wanted that priority,
Speaker 1: so that they instituted this. And uh, contrary to what
Speaker 1: all of us seemed to think before we learn about this,
Speaker 1: farmers hated this because if you actually think about it,
Speaker 1: the farmers they have to get up early and they
Speaker 1: have to do their chores. You know, they're supposed to
Speaker 1: do their chores along with sunrise, because there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that they get up early to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the daylight, and because a lot of crops have
Speaker 1: to be harvested, and it's some specific time frame that
Speaker 1: has to do with like the do point in the morning,
Speaker 1: or or or or caring for animals, like there are
Speaker 1: certain that the animals are accustomed to a particular cycle
Speaker 1: as well, and so you have your cycle as a
Speaker 1: farmer has to match the cycle of the crops and
Speaker 1: animals that you care for, right but so so you
Speaker 1: so some politicians come in and say, well, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna institute daylight saving time, um, and we're gonna steal
Speaker 1: all the light from your morning and we're gonna put
Speaker 1: it in the evening where we can use it better
Speaker 1: to wage war. Um. So the farmers suddenly they get
Speaker 1: up to do their morning chores and it looks like
Speaker 1: Picasso's blue period. Um. Yeah, even if they even if
Speaker 1: they were keeping their time to the time of the sun,
Speaker 1: because you could argue that, so why does the farmer
Speaker 1: even care about what the clock says? The farmer could
Speaker 1: get up whenever the sun comes up, which is true,
Speaker 1: except that everything else is working on the clocks. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the transportation system is working from the clocks.
Speaker 1: And if as a farmer, you have to get your
Speaker 1: goods out to somebody else, right, yeah, you missed the
Speaker 1: train and everything is exactly. That means that the train
Speaker 1: is coming an hour earlier than what it did before
Speaker 1: daylight saving time was instituted. Then you have to rush again.
Speaker 1: You have to get up earlier than what you would
Speaker 1: normally get up. You know again, Otherwise clock wouldn't really matter.
Speaker 1: It's because you have to deal with the outside world
Speaker 1: that it matters. So there there are tons of people
Speaker 1: around the world who just give a big thumbs down.
Speaker 1: Thumbs down there, I was seeing big thumbs down to
Speaker 1: daylight saving time, like the state of Arizona. State of
Speaker 1: Arizona just won't do it. I know. I think it's
Speaker 1: some Canadian provinces. I think, is it Saskatchewan. Now I'm
Speaker 1: going to feel bad if from remembering the wrong one.
Speaker 1: But some Canadian provinces they just know I think. I
Speaker 1: think Russia as a whole, They're like, no, we know
Speaker 1: that too cold here. Time doesn't even pass. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: stay the same seven. So that's funny though that when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I assumed daylight saving time before
Speaker 1: I got to the misconception about farmers. I think I
Speaker 1: assumed it had something to do with like science, right,
Speaker 1: like the planet this actually it has some meaning that
Speaker 1: that we must do because of his like leap here.
Speaker 1: I thought it was something like leap here right where
Speaker 1: you have to borrow an hour by part of the
Speaker 1: year and give it back another part of the year.
Speaker 1: That's telling me a lot about Joe and his child
Speaker 1: child sense. That's that's you know, that's what makes well.
Speaker 1: I mean when you look at it, when you look
Speaker 1: at it, Yeah, weren't we taught uh that was the
Speaker 1: smallest building block of matter? Yeah? Well, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this is all kind of illustrating how tricky it
Speaker 1: is to talk about time in any way that is, uh,
Speaker 1: that is meaningful from outside the human experience. But then again,
Speaker 1: we all live in the human experience, so what do
Speaker 1: we care. Uh, here's what I want to do. I
Speaker 1: want I want our listeners to want I wanted to
Speaker 1: watch the Forward Thinking episode about time because it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Joe did a great job on that. Two. I want
Speaker 1: you to go to the fw thinking dot com website
Speaker 1: and check that out. We've got some blog posts, we've
Speaker 1: got the video series, we've got this audio podcast, We've
Speaker 1: got lots of other stuff there, and we want you
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with us to talk about what
Speaker 1: is it about the future that get that has you
Speaker 1: excited or confused. Maybe there's something about the future that
Speaker 1: you're just what are we going to do in fifty
Speaker 1: years when dot dot dot. We want to know those questions,
Speaker 1: and we want to open this up and have a
Speaker 1: real conversation with you guys, so we welcome you to
Speaker 1: be take part in that. We are really eager to
Speaker 1: have this and uh, thanks guys so much for listening
Speaker 1: and being a part of this so far. We're really
Speaker 1: excited and we cannot wait to really dive into the
Speaker 1: future even deeper than we already have. Guys, we're gonna
Speaker 1: wrap this up. It's been great. I hope you have
Speaker 1: been enjoying the podcast less know and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: and the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,