In Time

“Beam me up, Scotty!” is an iconic line from Star Trek which fascinated my generation which grew up on cable TV in the 90’s. 30 odd years later, we are still far away from teleportation. Elon Musk may have envisioned pods which can help you travel at jaw breaking speeds but even this is not teleportation.

Everything in this world is made of light waves. This includes people, animals, trees, time and food.

If we were to find a way of commanding light waves so that they could be instantly transported then teleportation may be possible. But, where does science fiction end and laws of physics begin?

First, we need to get a sense of what is time. Musicians, poets and artists have over generations tried to express themselves through their craft and attach a sense of meaning to time.

But, time has no meaning. We can track it. We experience it through the day. Post sunset, the world’s energies seem different. The moon along with artificial light allows us to function all right but without our clocks we would have no sense of what time it is.

What does this mean? After all, time is critical. If we didn’t track time, then our infrastructure and offices would cease to function. We wouldn’t know when to wake up, eat, sleep or exercise.

Imagine a world where there was no concept of time. You would wake as per your natural body rhythm, go to work and hopefully have a productive day. Hang on, a productive day entails meetings. How would people co-ordinate without their clocks, calendars, schedules and meeting lists? Maybe people would move around, talk to each other and get a sense of each other’s schedules. Would that be such a bad thing?

The reality is that we need time. But, we do not understand it. Time is an illusion. The days blend into nights. The earth goes about its business and we get days, nights and seasons. The moon interacts with the earth and we get high and low tides. The entire cosmos is connected through gravity.

All the heavenly bodies exert their pull on each other and we get gravity. Gravity in turn leads to light and time.

“Beam me up Scotty!” may never happen. Elon Musk and his teleportation system may never take off. The two hour marathon may never be broken. After all, we have to work within the laws of physics.

But, what about the physics of our minds? How do our brainwaves operate and what is the science here? Research has shown that meditation and deep practice alters brain structure and matter. So, if an individual was to train smart and push himself to run 26 miles at 4 minutes per mile then the marathon could be done in 1 hour 45 minutes.

This is a far cry from the incremental changes in the world record where Africans have been shaving a minute or two off the world record every couple of years over the past decade. The current record is 2 hour and 30 seconds.

Well, we’ll never know unless we give it a good shot. Time may be an illusion. It may be an experience. It may be co-existence. It may not even matter in the long run because eventually we all die.

However, while we are around teleportation, pods and marathons well under two hours are all on the table. Maybe in a few decades, the 1 hour 45 marathon becomes like the 4 minute mile. Today, any reasonably fit runner who has trained well can run a mile under 4 minutes. At one point in time, this was the benchmark in middle distance running and was eventually breached by a physicist, Roger Bannister.

It all boils down to what we think of in our minds. If we think we can do it and we have the required technology or training to push ourselves then who is to stop us? Today, we can video call a person half across the world, plumb the depths of the ocean, send rockets to Mars and we are quibbling over whether we can break 2 hours in the marathon. Something seems amiss.

The only thing that stops us is our belief, training program, food habits and technique. For a person to smash two hours in the full marathon, he has to change the game. His training, lifestyle, diet, technique will all be unique.

It is possible in theory and all it needs is an innovative mind to bring it into practice. It will happen one day and hopefully within the next ten years.