About Time - Chapter 12 - Atomic time

Where for thousands of years the intricate dance of the heavenly bodies served as a perfectly suitable measure of time we have currently turned to the miniscule movements of atoms to dictate the chronological rhythm of our lives. Since the beginning of our story the scope of our experience of time has greatly expanded while we have learned to measure its passing with ever greater accuracy. While for our ancestors time seemed cyclical and mysterious, it is now linear and measurable. An absolute entity entrenched into the laws of the cosmos. From days to nanoseconds, from the godlike Sun to the minuscule atom, from the Babylonians to Isaac Newton; This story of time ends with mankind marching, eyes opened, to a standardized, uniform, forward moving time. Or so it would seem…

01:20 - Within the last century, theories of relativity and quantum mechanics have profoundly shocked our understanding of time. It has become clear that time is not absolute not uniform and not necessarily limited to one direction. Although we may not notice any difference in everyday life, these theories have scientists rethinking the very fundamental nature of time itself, which once again seems as mysterious and elusive as it must have been to our ancestors. It’s impossible to say how these modern mysteries will affect our experience of time in the future. But it’s likely to keep evolving as we uncover more about its fundamental qualities.

If anything, history has shown that our curious minds 02:15 - are likely to keep peeling away the layers of temporal illusion. And not unlikely, we will find future clues somewhere among the stars. .