Exploring Multiscale Time

Insight into processes taking place on many different scales is important for understanding time and the natural history of invention, as well as for understanding space and nanoscale science.  For example, this ability may help us put our (short-term and long-term) future in context with our (short-term and long-term) past.  The demo here combines Eric Chaisson's upbeat depiction of time's arrow in Complexity 9 (2004, p14-21), with Peter Ward and Don Brownlee's sobering depiction of earth's clock in Life and death of planet earth (2002, Owl Books, NY) based on geological and astrophysical observations.  If one moves the target time away from the present, it becomes even more obvious how much of time remains unknown.  This type of routine might offer one mechanism for exploring a "time wiki" database.  After all, some time domains outside the present (including the early universe) have been the subject of considerable work.  For readers accessing this page from the bottom of a deep gravitational well (or spaceship traveling near lightspeed with respect to our galaxy's center of mass), that wiki might use "far-time clocks" to define the relative timing of events.

Contributed by: P. Fraundorf

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