Saturday, February 07, 2009

A look into the 'True present'

It’s precisely because light has a finite speed, and our nervous systems are slower, the accident you just saw, actually happened just fractions of the second before you saw it. And by that measure, you have taken an eternity to realize that it was, in fact, an accident.

So is it not correct to say that you are looking at your world, as it was, a fraction of a second ago?

There's a time-lag involved between the
true-present and perceived-present. Mathematically, it can be described thus:

t = (d/C) + n,

Where,
't' is the time-lag between the true-present and perceived-present,
'C' is the speed of light (always constant)
'd' is the distance the reflected light had to travel to reach your eye and (can be a fixed value)
'n' is the sum of time taken by your eye, optic nerves and brain to 'see' the image (variable).

This time-lag however, is unnoticeable, and insignificant to us humans. But if we delve into this little time-lag, some fascinating concepts arise.

How does the person with nervous system slower than that of yours see the world?
He would be farther from the
true present than you are, back in time.

And if your nervous system is faster than that of his, then you are seeing things happen even before the other person
sees them. If you could relay to him what you see within that small fractional difference of time, then you could claim that you are looking into his future! But in any case, you yourself, are still looking at the things of the past...

Thus, to look into the 'true present', theoretically, what barriers must we break? Speed of the light? speed of our nervous system? What else?

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