• Question: Who invented time?

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ekbal Hussain

      Ekbal Hussain answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Hey mate!

      Now that’s a deep question. It’s interesting you ask ‘who’ and not ‘how’.

      Time itself was actually created with everything else in the universe in the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. So before the Big Bang there was no time …. that’s crazy!

      Humans have always known about time. Even the very early human beings understood the concept of time. For example, they understood that as time goes on we get older.

      Time has been a great mystery for scientists since the time of the famous Isaac Newton. Newton thought time was straight and never changing. But about a 100 years ago Albert Einstein showed that time can also change, it can slow down and speed up…

      I don’t think anyone truly understands what time really is, how it works and why it changes the way it does. It’s one of those grand but beautiful mysteries of our universe.

      Ekbal

    • Photo: Helen Gath

      Helen Gath answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Hi gargank,

      Good to see you’re still full of questions .

      Pre-historic man lived very closely along side the planet, and would have noticed the change in daylight hours with winter and summer. They would have then relied on judging the change in season and daylight hours to know when to harvest and plants crops. Around 5000 – 3500 BC, the most primitive ‘clock’ would have been a stick in the ground. As the Sun moved throughout the day, the stick’s shadow would have moved.

      An advance on this were sundials, water clocks, even hour glasses. Sticks became ornate obelisks or pyramids which tracked the sun’s movements even more accurately.

      By 150 ADO, the Greeks had developed their mathematical skills and incorporated this into reading sundials, meaning the day could be precisely divided into equal hours.

      The very first ‘clocks’ could not tell you the time, but were complicated mechanical constructions which simply sounded the hour – like the school bell going at 4pm 🙂

      You may recognise the name Galileo? He was actually the first person to create a clock controlled by a swinging pendulum – no need to rely on sunny skies! And the rest? well, that’s history….clock design advanced and we saw the production of pocket watches, wrist watches, grand father clocks…..and more. Interestingly, these still required some double checking with the good old, reliable sun-dials for the first few centuries.

      There you go, a mini history lesson! But quite an interesting one.

      Helen

Comments

  • Photo: Ekbal

    Ekbal commented on :

    ADDITIONS:

    Wait… if time was created at the Big Bang, then there is no such thing as “before the Big Bang”! Argghh my head is going to explode!

  • Photo: Ekbal

    Ekbal commented on :

    ADDITION 2:

    Here’s a cool and weird fact about time. Say, for example, you had a twin brother who was born at exactly the same time as you. And say he gets into a spaceship and flies off into space at a VERY fast speed close to the speed of light, that’s the fastest anything can ever travel.

    Let’s say he comes back to Earth after 20 years. You will be 20 years older from the day he left but your twin who was born at exactly the same time as you will be younger than you. He will have aged a lot less, say only 10 years.

    So for you, your brother was away for 20 years but on the spaceship your brother thinks he was only away for 10 years ….

    Time is a truly amazing and mind blowing thing!

  • Photo: Helen

    Helen commented on :

    Haha, you’re getting pretty deep Ekabl! Though science can be like that…there are many times when it’s hard to comprehend everything!! Good point about the big bang and time, because is the sun essentially governs our time scale, there wouldn’t be time before the big bang. I wonder how time would be measure on other planets with other sun’s?? hmmm…