Not So Fast !

Have you ever committed a faux pas that left you wishing you had spent just a second or two more thinking before you spoke to the woman who just slapped you?  Have you ever found yourself clinging to a rock face wondering why this hike seemed like a good idea when you started it?  Have you ever pondered why the checklist in your head seems to lack items that, mid-crisis, you know would be on the written one you’d always meant to complete?  Have you ever screamed like a little girl while waiting for the car, which just moments ago you had under perfect control, to come to a violent stop as it is spinning down the highway putting into practice all of those theories you neglected to internalize while dozing through physics class?

 In other words, do you wish you could stop everything for just a second allowing the logic that seems always to lag the enthusiasm time to catch up? Then brother (I exclude women here because this is not a problem experienced by the fair sex… quite the contrary, they tend to over think opportunities for adventure to the point of paralysis… but that is a thesis for future consideration) you are a member of the society of screw-ups… welcome.

Imagine just how sweet your life could have been if you’d had a switch, that when finding yourself under the pressure of making a decision, allowed you to stop time briefly while the rest of the world waited for the correct synapses to close leading you to the most beneficial and survivable alternative.  You probably wouldn’t have signed those loan documents committing you to five years of usury to pay for a Camaro you are destined to wreck during the first month of ownership.  You would probably still be dating that knock-out and be on friendly, albeit platonic, terms with her mousy little cousin.  You wouldn’t be digging bubble gum out of your mustache.  Yes, the ability to stop time would be a great asset to anybody who is prone to questionable decision making.

But before one can control time (and I mean actually influence the flow of time, not merely control the speed of events which happen within time), one must define time.  Well, as far as I can reckon from watching the Science channel, there are three types of time. One is the cosmological notion of space-time which theorizes that any event (indeed, all events) is unique in its known position in all four dimensions, height, width, depth and time.  This has far too many variables for my feeble intellectual distillation abilities so we will all agree the problem of time control is far too complex to solve within this definition.

Another definition of time, closely related to but seemingly irreconcilable to the first, is the time associated with quantum uncertainty.  If you thought time type one was tricky… well just consult with any of Schrödinger’s very confused cats and you will see by their nervous ticks that not only is this concept impossible to put into practice, it’s scary as hell.

So that leaves us with the third definition of time.  The time we experience by marking our lives against the mechanical movements of components within our solar system vis-à-vis each other. Now as abstract as the first two time definitions seem to be, they are far more concrete than the tools we use to measure our own lives and experiences because that time is based on the purely serendipitous confluence of way too many variables to have even the remotest probability of purpose.  (Remember: Why vs. How.) None the less, it is the time we are comfortable with because it allows us the illusion of control over the events of our lives.

What is the key measurement within our time toolbox?  The year; that celestial phenomenon defined as one circuit of the Earth around the Sun.  To reinforce this statement, let’s take a look at some conversational evidence.  When asked for their age, one does not reply, “262,800 hours!”  They would most likely say, “Thirty.” Years being implied in the answer.

“When did you graduate from high school?”

“Nineteen seventy-two.”

The second level of time measurement is dominated by the day, that experience of the Earth completing one full rotation on its axis.  When discussing events of imminence, we default to this level and its subdivisions; the hour, minute and second. Aha! A unit that we can associate with the thesis subject; stopping time for a second. The second is not existential in itself as it is an abstract creation born of the human need to order the universe.  But by life-long conditioning it is a phenomenon on which we can all agree even if it is observable only by use of a device created to track the passage of time as we imagine it.  Look, I’m trying to be scholarly here, don’t try to get too much out of this paragraph other than I saw it as an opportunity to throw around some cool words.

So now that we have concluded that the second is the time measurement of choice for our experiment and that a second is a subdivision of the length of time the Earth requires to complete the rotation known as a day we must assume that the way to save or gain a second is to stop the Earth’s rotation.  Let’s suspend our disbelief for just a few moments and pretend we have developed the power to stop our planet’s rotation in its tracks.  What would happen?

Don’t panic; I’ll do the math for you. The Earth rotates at a rate of approximately 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. But since I live in San Diego, which is at north latitude 33˚, not on the equator, we must adjust for the difference in the diameter of the circle described by the Thirty-third parallel.  This results in a one-third reduction in speed, or a rate of approximately 667 miles per hour.  This translates to about 978 feet per second.  Are you with me so far? Good!

So, when we magically stop the Earth’s rotation in its tracks, everything resting on the earth (e.g., buildings, vehicles, the ocean, you) would continue to travel eastward with an initial velocity of nearly 1,000 feet per second until something (e.g., air drag, mountains) brought you to a halt.  Can you think of anywhere on the planet you might be where you wouldn’t strike something in a 1,000 foot-long flight at ground level?

So there you have it. Stopping the world for a second to think about it would result in the  complete destruction of everything.  Now, aren’t you glad you took an extra second to think this through?