Brother’s (time)keeper

O terrible turkey, how time flies! Ten days ago since the last post and I hardly had time to wakeup and smell my coffee … uhm … chicory.

My brother has a theory that Time has speeded up. The actual units of time are moving faster – everywhere. He says that intuitively we can feel that time moved much slower two decades back.

Now you might think that such an idea is silly, but just ponder it a moment. Don’t you feel it too? We all had much more time twenty years ago, didn’t we?

Of course we still have the same amount of time – twenty four hours a day (give or take a few thousands of a second). But what if the actual time units are moving by faster? What if a second used to last a second, but now it lasts less that what a second used to be?

You may consider it far fetched, but keep in mind Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the phenomena of Gravitational Time Dilation. Basically Gravitational Time Dilation entails that space-time is “curved” the closer it gets to a strong gravitational pull, which results in time passing slower.

Is it possible that decades ago the Earth had a stronger gravitational pull; in the meantime it had enigmatically weakened, thus space-time is less distorted, and so time is now passing faster?

Of course we cannot test it with atomic clocks, which is the way Gravitational Time Dilation was proved in the first place. The reason for this is that we cannot communicate with scientists from the past with access to atomic clocks in order to calibrate it with our own atomic clocks here in the present.

An easier method than communicating with the long dead is to check if the Earth lost some of its gravitational pull through the years. This would happen if Mother Earth lost some mass.

That doesn’t seem to be the case. Geophysics claim that the Earth has a dynamic energy equilibrium, which means the mass it loses (maybe through radiation) it also receives back from other sources such as radiation from the sun and other space debris. The Earth receives energy from the sun. Energy = matter, said Einstein, and matter has mass.

However there is something that had been happening in the last twenty years – Global Warming. Or is it Global Cooling? (The former caused the latter.)

It comes down to lots of air pollution. All these extra dirt particles floating in the air, apart from being smoggy, also create more clouds. Rain form when moisture condensates on particles and once attaining enough weight they fall to the ground. The problem is, if there are too many such particles in the air the condensational buildup on such a particle are less, because there is not enough moisture to go around. (There are just too many smog-particles!) The result is more cloudiness. In turn this extra blanket of clouds and smog reflect more sunlight away. Even though more heat is trapped inside the Earth’s atmosphere due to the Green House Effect (i.e. Global Warming), there is actually less sunlight penetrating the Earth’s atmosphere (i.e. Global Cooling), resulting in less energy, which in turn means less matter, and therefore less accumulation of mass.

So, the Earth is not in a dynamic energy equilibrium anymore for probably at least the last approximate twenty years, and may indeed be losing mass, so it’s gravitational pull may actually be decreasing, which means that space-time may be less distorted, which results in time moving faster!

But now for the paranoia: Who is behind Global Warming, which in turn causes Global Cooling, and why do they want Time to move faster? Mmmm?

Whether my hypothesis above is scientifically sound I don’t know. I’m not a physicist, and I do not have visions – I’m merely paranoid. Verifiable tests about the Earth’s gravitational pull is possible, but even if such tests should prove that the Earth has not diminished in gravitational exertion over the past two decades it does not mean that our time is not influenced by other fluctuations in space-time. We know that the universe is expanding and galaxies are moving away from each other, which mean that the relative gravitational pulls that the galaxies had on each other are weakening.

And that is why my brother is not silly.