The notion of Time from the lens of Neuroscience and Physics

I often listen to books these days, rather than read them, most of the time while walking. So if I catch hold of a good book, which I get engrossed in, then I end up walking more. "Your Brain is a time machine" by Dean Buonomano is one such book. Once I started it, I had to finish it. My apologies to all those people who might have passed by me on those morning and evening walks, and who tried to smile at me or greet me in any way. I was obviously not where you thought I was.

This is as much a book review as is it a rant about a subject that is so fascinating - How our Universe works and why on earth have humans not been able to find that theory/equation that explains the working of everything from the Quantum Level to the biggest objects in the Universe, the Neutron Stars, Dark Matter, and Black Holes? Hidden within this topic is the unique Question of " What is Time and what does it imply?". Anybody who is remotely connected to Physics will agree that this is arguably the most important question of our times. So, who knows, the Next Nobel Prize for Physics may very well be for the person/people who can help solve this riddle a bit better.

THE BOOK REVIEW

Dean B takes a unique perspective to ask this question in many ways and also puts forward various theories and approaches that have been explored around the question of "What is time". Since we perceive the Universe through the biological body that we possess, the understanding of how our brain interprets time and can interpret time is fundamental to both our understanding of "Time" as well as our limitations in how far we can reach into the truth of its' definition if we rely purely on our intuition of this world. He touches on the subjective nature of time interpretation and how our brain can interpret the same duration of time as being different based on the environment, past experience, and so on.

He goes into the two views on time - around Eternalism and Presentism. He links this back to Einstien's Theories of general and special relativity, The arrow of Entropy, and the Probabilistic nature of Quantum Mechanics.

A Little bit of PHYSICS

Einstein's theory of General Relativity explains Gravity, not as a force, but as an emergent entity due to the curvature of space-time. His theory of Special Relativity establishes a relationship between the speed of a moving object and time. This in combination with the concepts of General relativity also brings the mass of objects into consideration. He emphasizes the importance of a frame of reference. His famous Thought Experiment of Observers sitting in moving trains ( which sometimes approach the speed of light) is linked to his theory of Special Relativity. He introduced the concept of Time being relative to the frame of reference. If this seems complicated, then let's examine this simple scenario- If you and I are sitting in the same room and chatting, we are observing and hearing each other from the past. So the very concept of "Now" is relative. Your "Now" is not the same as my "Now". Since the speed of light is a very high number and people sitting in the same room ( tens of meters apart ) implies that the time that light takes to travel from one person to another is less than 0.00000033?seconds. ( Light takes approx 0.00000033?secs to travel a hundred meters) . Anything that requires less than 0.1 seconds is instantaneous to the human brain. Incidentally light travels faster than sound, and it takes less than 0.1 seconds for the sound from somebody in the same room as us to reach us. ( The human perception of sound is instantaneous for values less than 0.2 seconds) So we live in a comfortable reality where the "Now" seems like a universal "Now" around us- A sense of simultaneous experience, whereas in reality, the limitations of our brain render this illusion.

Now imagine you and me having a conversation within a room just a short distance from the event horizon of a black hole ( Gravity is intense and time slows down dramatically- as per Einstien's theory of General relativity). We would surely perceive things differently there....chances are we might go insane if we weren't already crushed due to the gravitational forces because our brain would be unable to comprehend the speed at which the images and the sounds are coming to us.

So truly, we cannot understand "Time" unless we understand the "Human Brain".

Also when we talk of time we often equate time with space. We measure distances in light years is proof of that. Since time is not that well understood by us, might our very theories of the Universe be under question? The James Webb Telescope will surely give us enough opportunity to dwell on this topic.

THOUGHTS ON THOUGHT INTEGRATORS

It got me thinking that we are seeing a convergence of subjects just about everywhere. It is so important to understand the neuroscience of time to really solve the physics behind time. and hence the physics behind Quantum Gravity and hence the Unified theory of everything ( if we can still call it that). The biggest problems in this world need "Thought Integrators" or Specialists in multiple subjects.

The Philosophy of Time and the Human Brain

Scientific Concepts and Philosophy are more entwined than ever. You might have heard statements like "Time is eternal" " Time Marches on", " I didn't realize how quickly time flew by" Or " It was so boring, the time came to a crawl" The literary /philosophical aspect of time is that we perceive time differently based on our experiences. Apparently, neuroscientists have discovered through experiments that depending on the association of memory, time may seem elongated or compressed.

The theories of Eternalism and Presentism are the Scientific way of Philosophising about time ( At the borderline of theory and proof)

There's so much more to this topic .....more in a different post. As you can see I have a personal unique sense of time ...my LinkedIn posts not really coming at the same frequency...so who knows when the next post will be. But enough of this rant ...do share your comments on this article and let me know what other topics might be of interest to you.