Our generation is obsessed with time, but do you know that the clocks became only relevant at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when factories needed to coordinate and synchronize hundreds of workers. Read on to know some more interesting facts about time.
Does the day comprise 24 hours?
The Earth does not take 24 hours to rotate but takes exactly 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.2 seconds. Every day the Earth edges further in its orbit around the Sun and this change in its position stretches the day a bit. This is the reason from sunrise to sunrise we use 24 hours to define the day.
Does time pass uniformly across?
In the simplest terms, time passes slightly faster in front of your face than in your feet assuming you are standing up. This is due to Einstein's theory of relativitywhich defines that the closer you are to the center of the earth, the slower the time passes. A year will be about 15 microseconds shorter at the top of Mount Everest than at the sea level.
Does the time remain constant?
For reference, at the time when dinosaurs used to roam Earth, a year had 370 days. This is due to the moon’s gravity which acts as a drag making the day longer by 1.7 milliseconds per century. This makes the current year 365 days long. Furthermore, everything you see is in the past. The light from the Sun you see is 8 minutes and 20 seconds old as the light takes time to reach us!
Does the speed of your movement affect the time?
Yes, time passes slower if you move faster. For reference, if a person took a flight to Sirius star at 99% of the speed of light, and then came back to Earth at the same speed, your friends on Earth would have aged more than 17 years while you would have aged merely two and a half years.
How does time become consistent across countries?
In the 19th century, townships set their clocks by the local noon, so clocks in a city would be several minutes behind another city.The railway companies began to use standard London-based UK time so that people don’t miss trains due to different timekeeping.
Will the time come to an end?
The Universe will continue to expand infinitely as per the theory of relativity. There are some theoretical physicists who suggest that the time will end in the next four billion years. This means in a few billion years, everything will be frozen forever, like a snapshot.
