May 16, 20198 min read

How long do things take?

Updated: Jan 24, 2020

The dilation of time as you approach near to light speeds — Time dilation/ Modified photo/ Veri Ivanova on Unsplash, see link under sources

Think your afternoon nap wasn’t long enough? Think again, because in 1964, a high school student by the name Randy Gardner[1], broke the world record for the longest someone had ever gone without sleeping. The period of his sleep deprivation; 11 days and 24 minutes! He showed signs of moodiness and paranoia towards the end of his sleep deprivation period but recovered completely without any long-term psychological or physical effects.

Everything that we know in the universe has time constraints. Things happen in a given time frame, while some only take a few seconds, others seem to take forever. But compared to stars, and cosmic bodies, the human clock is pretty flimsy, it doesn’t even register on the cosmic lifespans of things. But even in this not-so-significant life of ours, we have accomplished some pretty amazing things over time. We built marvelous structures like the pyramids, paved numerous roads for transportation, and when our thirst for knowledge grew, we conducted experiments to understand the science around us, and created devices to view our place in the universe. And to top it all of, we sent our species to the moon, and now stand a few steps away from landing on Mars. However, all these achievements have a thing in common—they are bound by time. Our clock always ticks, no matter what project we undertake.

Oh, the things we have built

Herodotus[2], a Greek historian, wrote in his book about his visit to Egypt in 450 BC. In it, he mentions that it took around 20 years for 100,000 workers to build the great pyramid of Giza. But in modern times, archaeologists reduced the number of workers to 20,000. Though 20 years might sound like a lot today, the pyramids were built with basic ramps and sleds almost 4000 years ago. But surely, with modern technology, the pyramid could be built a lot faster than that. Jean-Pierre Houdin[3], a French architect, estimates the project to take around 5 years with 1500-2000 workers. In comparison, the Burj Khalifa[4], which stands at around 830 meters tall, by far the tallest thing that we have ever built, took just about the same construction time.

the ancient pyramids of giza — The Pyramids of Giza/ Photo by Jeremy Bishop @ Unsplash/ See link under sources

People still aren’t sure when the la Sagrada Familia, a stunning piece of architecture in the city of Barcelona, will be completed. Spanish reports say that a goal was set for 2026, and if it were to be the case, the landmark will have taken 144 years to complete since construction began in 1882! But the time pyramid in Germany probably takes the cake as far as numbers go. A public art by Manfred Labour[5], located in Wemding, Germany, is taking things slow, one block at a time, literally. The time-pyramid, when completed, will have 120 blocks, and only three blocks had been laid since 1993. It is estimated that at the rate of 1 block per decade, it will be completed in 3183, which is 1164 years from now.

We are definitely not going to be around when the time-pyramid gets completed. In fact, all long-term projects face the same time conundrum, our lifetimes are too short, and centuries, and millenniums are just too long for us to wrap our minds around. Only if we weren’t prisoners of time, only if time could somehow move slow. But wait, what if it does move slow?

When time behaves odd

In 1905, it was Albert Einstein who determined that time moves differently for different observers. And with this refreshing understanding, we realized that time is influenced by gravity as well as motion. In fact, according to Einstein’s theories, the clocks on the 2nd floor of a building would move faster than the clocks on the 1st floor, but the fluctuation in time would be so small that it is hardly noticeable to us. The further away from the earth we get, the gravitational time dilation increases.

The astronauts aboard the international space station[6] feel the effects of it the most. Because it orbits at a distance of 408 km from the earth’s surface, the ISS clocks run faster. But it would mean that astronauts lose their seconds faster than us, but quite the contrary is what we normally hear—they age slower, and there is a good reason behind it. The ISS has an orbital velocity of 7.66 km/s[7], which is so fast that it orbits the Earth about 16 times[8] in 24 hours! As things move faster, another effect comes into play. This time, due to the motion of the object. But this relativity due to motion affects time differently from that of gravity. Contrastingly, the clocks run slower as the speed increases, and this effect is more significant on the ISS than relativistic gravitational effects. And thus, the velocity-time dilation overcomes the gravitational time dilation and slows the clocks down.

the international space station soaring above our planet — International Space Station/ Credit: STS-122 Shuttle Crew, NASA

But these time distortions are faint, not very useful if you want to gain conspicuous time. For that, we would have to walk into the realm of hypothetical science. The universal speed boundary is that of the speed of light, and nothing with mass can attain that speed. But for all intents and purposes, let's imagine a spaceship that can travel at 99 % the speed of light. When you go on a yearlong space expedition on this spaceship, time dilation will have taken full effect on you that when you return, almost seven years will have passed on Earth! The time dilation calculator[9] is a fun exercise to get awestruck by the extremities of special relativity. But this relative time dilation effect caused due to motion can sometimes look deceptive, and the famous twin paradox arises from it.

But the fact remains that we are nowhere near to achieving such vast speeds. In fact, the Parker solar probe[10] clocked the fastest speed ever achieved by any man-made object during its closest approach to the sun. But even with a max speed of approximately 194 km/s, which without a doubt is rapid, is not even 0.1% the speed of light.

Life of a photon

But what if you were massless? Light is an electromagnetic wave which consists of massless energetic particles called photons, which travels at 300,000 km/s. In the sun’s core, where temperatures can get insanely high, hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium, but in the process loses a bit of mass. This mass is converted to energy, and this energy is emitted in small packets called photons. But how does a mass-less particle-like photon even experience time?

Visualization of photons emitted from a star

The life of a photon is hard to understand. It takes a lot of time for the photon to emerge to the surface of the sun because of the density[11] of the solar layers, but once it reaches the surface, it travels at 300,000 km/s to reach earth in about 8 minutes. But things get really complicated when we approach this from the photon’s point of view. Because a photon has zero rest mass, it does not accelerate but exists at the speed of light right from the get-go. GN-Z11[12], the farthest galaxy ever observed by the Hubble telescope, is 13.4 billion light-years away, which means that it takes light 13.4 billion years to reach our eyes from it. But for a photon, this extremely long voyage would feel instantaneous, and thus, unlike us, time would be meaningless for it!

Other means to live a long life

But traveling at the speed of light is forbidden under the current laws of physics, and even approaching the speed barrier is nothing more than wishful thinking with modern-day technology. So, could there be any other way to prolong our lives?

The answer lies in the realm of microscopic things. Some bacteria can go dormant and come back to life after thousands of years. They achieve this marvelous feat by forming spores around their bodies, which are resistant to even harsh external environments. A strain of bacteria was found in an icy block in Greenland, which was revived by scientists after 120,000 years. What if somehow, we could do the same?

Cryonics is a preservation method that is slowly growing in popularity. A common component in Sci-Fi movies, cryonics deep-freezes a body at low temperature[13], generally at liquid nitrogen temperature, to achieve a stable biological state which could be reversed to revive the body in the foreseeable future, when health science will have improved to do so. But there exists a small problem. Unlike what we see in movies, because of legal and ethical issues, cryonics is only for ones who are deceased. But cryonics is in its infant stage, and perhaps, it has a long way to go until it becomes scientific reality.

Currently, there are no feasible ways to make long-life a reality. But what if you don’t have to physically be there to experience whatever you wanted to experience? What if you could leave a part of you behind? Writing a book about your experiences and memories is a good way to connect with your fellow future readers. Thus, you are alive within their minds. But the problem is that people tend to forget things fast. When people grow old, they aren’t going to remember what they had read about you, but their thoughts are likely to be about their loved ones, especially their families.

The people who remember you best are actually the people who you spent your lives with; your family. We know that genetic information such as growth, survival, and reproduction is transferred from one generation to the next within a family. And if all people currently alive could trace their matrilineal ancestry back to around 150,000 years, all family trees would converge at our most recent common ancestor, a woman known as mitochondrial eve[14] in human genetics.

Your genes are unquestionably old. The traits that you carry are inherited from many generations that lived behind you in the arrow of time, and without a doubt, your children will inherit these genes too. So, maybe you don’t have to live a long life to see what the future holds. Your children and their children will do it for you!

How long do things take?

Oh, the things we have built

When time behaves odd

Life of a photon

Other means to live a long life

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