www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Welcome to my Page of Time! "One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse betneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatcfhes, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in pefrect succesion. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all." - Alan Lightman in his novel, Einstein's Dreams, pp. 33-34

Click Here for my page on Death - a topic very much related to time...

(Click on any of this page's "Thumbnail" images for a larger view)

I support and encourage continued funding for the over-the-air time standard broadcasts of WWV and WWV-H.   In its budget submission for 2019 the National Institute of Standards and Technology had suggested de-funding $6.3M covering the operation of the long-standing over-the-air time standard broadcasts.   The operation of these transmitters has been a critical reference for general HF (high-frequency) radio propagation assessment, manual time-keeping and setting, radio-frequency reference for stability and accuracy, as well as other valuable RF and time data characteristics. These services support terrestrial communications, scientific data, commercial/industrial instrumentation, researchers and hobbyists in the U.S. and globally.   Luckily the decision was later reversed...

NIST, WWV and WWVH Let's start out with WWV, they use a Cesium Fountain Clock for our country's time standard. Click Here to visit "NIST," WWV's home page or, call 303-499-7111 and hear the WWV signal live, on your telephone.

A girlfriend actually accompanied me on this 1975 "date" to WWV...

Both of these photos were taken at WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado in early October, 1975

At that time WWV's transmitter site was located on County Road 1 just outside of Fort Collins, Colorado

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists Steve Jefferts and Tom Heavner with the NIST-F2 "cesium fountain" atomic clock [In 2014 a new civilian time standard for the United States].

Hutton:

"The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, -no prospect of an end."

Hawking:

"The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time. There are at least three different arrows of time. First, there is the thermodynamic arrow of time, the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Then, there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes, the direction in which we remember the past but not the future. Finally, there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction of time in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting."

Sean Carroll:

I'm trying to understand how time works. And that's a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it. A lot of them go back to Einstein and spacetime and how we measure time using clocks. But the particular aspect of time that I'm interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg.

And we sort of understand that halfway. The arrow of time is based on ideas that go back to Ludwig Boltzmann, an Austrian physicist in the 1870s. He figured out this thing called entropy. Entropy is just a measure of how disorderly things are. And it tends to grow. That's the second law of thermodynamics: Entropy goes up with time, things become more disorderly. So, if you neatly stack papers on your desk, and you walk away, you're not surprised they turn into a mess. You'd be very surprised if a mess turned into neatly stacked papers. That's entropy and the arrow of time. Entropy goes up as it becomes messier.

So, Boltzmann understood that and he explained how entropy is related to the arrow of time. But there's a missing piece to his explanation, which is, why was the entropy ever low to begin with? Why were the papers neatly stacked in the universe? Basically, our observable universe begins around 13.7 billion years ago in a state of exquisite order, exquisitely low entropy. It's like the universe is a wind-up toy that has been sort of puttering along for the last 13.7 billion years and will eventually wind down to nothing. But why was it ever wound up in the first place? Why was it in such a weird low-entropy unusual state?

That is what I'm trying to tackle. I'm trying to understand cosmology, why the Big Bang had the properties it did. And it's interesting to think that connects directly to our kitchens and how we can make eggs, how we can remember one direction of time, why causes precede effects, why we are born young and grow older. It's all because of entropy increasing. It's all because of conditions of the Big Bang.

John Muir:

"Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy-laden year ... give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal."

Philip Goff:

"... the eternalist defends a kind of temporal egalitarianism. If you think there's something special about the present moment then you're guilty of chronological chauvinism, or 'time racism': privileging withut justification your own time over that of others. The thoughts and feelings of the Norman warriors of 1066 are no less real than your thoughts and feelings; the bodies of the Martian colonists no less solid to touch. Due to our position in time we are unable to see past and future events, but that doesn't make them unreal; is just makes them somewhere - or rather somewhen - else."   From his book, Galileo's Error: Foundations For A New Science Of Consciousness, pp. 58-59 [Ed. Note: I had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Goff about his book on 01-31-2020]

Goldberg and Blomquist:

"Clocks run slower nearer massive bodies than far away. Even on the surface of Earth time runs slower than time in deep space, but only by about 1 part in a billion. To put that in perspective, after a hundred years, a clock in deep space and on Earth will differ by only three seconds. You shouldn't be surprised that the effect is so small, either. If it were big, it would be part of your physical intuition. However, as we will see, near the event horizon of a black hole, this effect becomes really significant. Compared to distant observers, an astronaut at rest near the event horizon will appear to be moving infinitely slowly."

Time Dilation:

Eastbound on highway 6 & 50 in western Utah

"Whenever you see someone speed by you, their clocks will run more slowly as far as you're concerned, but you don't have a watch precise enough to show this. If you look overhead and see a plane flying by at about 600 mph, and somehow you had the keen eyesight to see the captain's watch, you could see her clock running slower than yours - but only by 1 part in 10 trillion! In other words, if the captain flew for 100 years, by the end of that period, she would have escaped from almost an entire second's worth of aging. So even though this effect (called 'time dilation') is always in force, the fact is that you will never notice it in your everyday life." "Time dilation really kicks in when you start going close to the speed of light." "Time and space really are relative to your state of motion. This is not an optical illusion; it is not a psychological impression; it is actually how the universe works."

Planck Time:

Named after German physicist Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, a unit of Planck time is the time it takes for light to travel, in a vacuum, across a single unit of Planck length - this is the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning and is equal to equal to 10-43 seconds. The Planck length, itself, is the smallest measurement of length with any meaning and is roughly equal to 1.6 x 10-35 metres or about 10-20 times the size of a proton...

"A Deep Dive Into Deep Time"

"When rocks are liquid or nearly liquid, what geologists call plastic, they contain a certain amount of rubidium and a certain amount of strontium. The mixture is measurable by diligent radiochemists. When that molten rock spews out of a volcano, say, it solidifies. By looking at the ratios of certain elements frozen in with rubidium and strontium, radiochemists and geochemists can determine how long ago the melt, as it's called, turned solid. In the case of rubidium and strontium, we can count on precisely half of the rubidium-87 to transmute to stontium-87 (now with 49 protons) in 48.8 billion years. That's right, almost 50 billion (with a b) years. It is the nature of radioactivity. You cannot determine what any one atom will do, but you can determine with just crazy precision how long it will take a sample of half the stuff to change from one to the other. This is where the expression half-life comes from. Furthermore, we can determine when a quarter of it will change, when an eighth of it will change, a sixteenth, a thirty-second, a sixty-forth, a one-hundred-twenty-eighth, a two-hundred-fifty-sixth, etc."   - Bill Nye in his book, Undeniable (Evolution, and the Science of Creation), pp. 33-34

More thoughts on time:

• "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is."
   
                    - Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Chapter 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For)
• ""I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
   :
                    - Albert Einstein
• "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
   
                    - Physicist Niels Bohr
• "There is no universal time, because time is a route-dependent quantity."
   
                    - Physicist Hermann Bondi, Relativity and Common Sense (Chapter XII, Acceleration)
• "Time is concomitant with the physical world but cannot be pointed to as existing in any material way."
   
                    - His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, An Open Heart (Chapter 3, The Material and Immaterial World)
• "Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down,
  past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present"
   
                    - John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley (In Search of America) p. 137

Time Orientation

The past is just a memory and the future is a guess. The point where they meet is the present, and it is the only place you exist. The address of where you live is eternally now. - Camden Benares in Zen without Zen masters

Time Pink Floyd

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking And racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time Plans that either come to nought, or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say Home, home again I like to be here when I can When I come home cold and tired It's good to warm my bones beside the fire Far away across the fields The tolling of an iron bell Calls the faithful to their knees To hear the softly spoken magic spells [Fom their Darkside of the Moon album]

ON TIME Time was, is past thou canst recall, Time is, thou hast employ the portion small, Time future, is not and may never be, Time present is, the only time for thee. (10-13-2006) I found this printed on a Sunderland Lustre Jug (early 19th Century), at Bamburgh Castle, while Tami and I were visiting the UK - unfortunately photography wasn't allowed inside...

Daylight Savings Time (DST):

Okay, what web page addressing the concept of "Time" could possibly go on without touching on the evils of Daylight Savings Time? Well, not this one!!

For those of you in parts of the world (and parts of the U.S.) who don't have to set your clocks back and forth every few months the concept must seem Really strange! Well, for many of us who are forced to endure this semiannual ritual it seems equally strange as well!!

Although it will never happen in my lifetime, simply ending Daylight Savings Time would bring peace, harmony, and steady sleeping habits to those people living in places that are still engaged in time tinkering.

There are tons of web pages, around the Internet, that suggest we end Daylight Savings Time. Here are a couple that provide some thoughtful insight to the idea along with a little history:

• End Daylight Savings Time "Anti" DST
• WebExhibits "Pro" DST but offers history and opposing viewpoints...

Dates and the Common Era: What does "AD," "CE," and "BCE" mean?

AD, or "Anno Domini" is Latin for "In the year of Our Lord" - it's a dating system based on the Christian belief in the Birth of Christ. The problem is, most of the world isn't Christian so it's pretty unfair to require Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Witches, Druids and Atheists to refer to the current date as being in the year of the Lord when they may not even know who Jesus was to begin with! Plus, there's a lot of controversy over the actual date Jesus was born at anyway - it can vary as much as six years and probably didn't take place in December!!

So, it's become increasingly more common to refer to dates as they relate to CE or the "Common Era." The Common Era is the period beginning with a year near the birth of Jesus, coinciding with the period from AD 1 onwards. Of course any date before the AD1 is referred to as "BCE," or Before Current Era.

Here's what Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia,
has to say about dates and the Common Era:

"When used as a numbering system for years, the Common Era is abbreviated as CE and the BCE/CE system is synonymous with the much more common BC/AD system ('before Christ' and 'anno Domini,' or 'in the year of [our] Lord [Jesus Christ]'). Thus 500 CE is the same year as AD 500. Similarly, 'before the Common Era' and BCE are used synonymously with 'before Christ' and BC. Just like the AD/CE equivalency, any 'BC' year is the same 'BCE' year, so it is equally accurate to say that Julius Caesar was assassinated in either 44 BC or 44 BCE.

"Both 'CE' and 'BCE' follow the year. This contrasts with proper use of 'AD', which mirrors the fact that the original Latin is a prepositional phrase, so 'in the year of the Lord 1601' is correctly written as 'AD 1601', and not as '1601 AD', as many people write. This is opposite to correct usage of 'BC', which is always written after the year it modifies (e.g. '44 BC')."

Ancient Time:

"These astronomers excelled in their mathematics. Neither ancient Greeks or Romans had the concept of zero. The Maya did, and they used it in computations that took them thousands of years backward into mythic time when the original ruler-gods were born and the sun first dawned. While Europe tried to calculate with unwieldy Roman numerals, the Mayas used a positional system comparable to our decimal system; there's had a base of 20, however, not 10."

Jantar Mantar
Astronomical and Astrological Observatory
Jaipur, India

During a visit to India Tami and I had the pleasure of visiting the Yantra Mandir (commonly known as Jantar Mantar) collection of architectural astronomical instruments in Jaipur, India. Built between 1727 and 1734, by Maharaja ("King") Jai Singh II it is similar to the four other he had built around the country - this one in Jaipur being the largest... The observatory consists of fourteen major geometric devices for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking stars in their orbits, ascertaining the declinations of planets, and determining the celestial altitudes and related ephemerides. Due to its large size and scale, one of the sundials is accurate to within about two seconds of local time...

Ancient Time:

"These astronomers excelled in their mathematics. Neither ancient Greeks or Romans had the concept of zero. The Maya did, and they used it in computations that took them thousands of years backward into mythic time when the original ruler-gods were born and the sun first dawned. While Europe tried to calculate with unwieldy Roman numerals, the Mayas used a positional system comparable to our decimal system; there's had a base of 20, however, not 10."

WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? Earth First! Journal, Lughnasadh 2012, p. 1

"Let's not parse words. The Gregorian calendar was created by elites to better control the collection of taxes and the observance of a domineering and colonial religion - first throught Europe and Africa, and then the world. It's a cultural ietm that we could do without. By resisting the oppressive calendar we take one small step towards reclaiming time, slowing it, honoring it, and blending it back into the biological and spiritual elements of the Earth."

Time Capsules

I've always been fascinated with time capsules and even had an opportunity to contribute to a few over my lifetime. I think we "did" one in grade school and then, in Junior High, some friends and I burried a couple of homemade ones (sealed glass jars placed inside old tin cands) in the Los Angeles neighborhood I was living in at the time. Then, in 1989 I was able to make a contribution to a more formal event sponsored by the City of Aurora, Colorado where I had claimed residence for the past 17 years. Below is the text of my submission, which was later confirmed as being included. (Click Here for a copy of my original submission)

Give Us Your Ideas for MJC Cornerstone Contents

The cornerstone of the new Municipal Justice Center is scheduled to be formally placed at 4 p.m. Tuesday, September 12. In that cornerstone will be a time capsule that will include items of community significance and messages to future Aurorans about our life and times. Cornerstones are traditionally opened a century after they are placed. News Aurora would like to know about the items or messages YOUR think should be included int he cornerstone. Any words of wisdom for future generations? what do you think they'll like most about the city? Do you have suggestions about photographs, documents, memorabilia or other items that should be included?

Jot down your thoughts on the reverse side, tear it off and return it with your water payment. Or for more information, telephone 695-7187.

Roger J. Wendell 693-4244
17427 East Grand Drive
Aurora, Colorado 80015-2007

Here are my suggestions on items for the cornerstone:
"A photograph of the open space that presently surrounds much of Aurora."

Here's a message I would like to send to Aurorans of future generations about my life and times:
"For many of us in 1989, the future of city life appears to be very bleak. Our quality of life diminishes daily with more crowding, crime and pollution. We have also lost vast amounts of wilderness and wildlife as a direct result of the city's growth. Some of us are working hard to ensure a peaceful, healthy planet for the Aurorans of 2089. I apologize now if our efforts were futile and I pray that you can continue where we failed."

Electric Clocks

"The surprisingly accurate old-fashioned ac wall clock uses a synchronous ac motor. This is because the 60Hz line frequency of the US power grid is atomic clock accurate when averaged over longer periods. In fact, before global positioning satellites (GPS), the 60 Hz power grid line frequency was by far the most accurate frequency standard available to the average ham [amateur radio operator].So, don't toss out your plug-in wall clock just yet." - Eric P. Nichols, KL7AJ "Motors and Mechanisms in the Ham Shack" QST Magazine, November 2014, p. 31.

Sundial - USPS Bolger Center, Maryland

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