StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Timekeeping

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

What time is it? Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Chuck Nice, and astronomer and anthropologist Anthony Aveni answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries about timekeeping, the history of time, and more! NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-timekeeping/ Thanks to our Patrons Douglas Robinson, Michael Kiddy, Oskari Laine, David Frederick, Tim Shearn, Emily Lindy, Vincent Wright, Jason Kawa, Jennifer Alyssa Aiken, and Melinda Ellis for supporting us this week. Image Credit: Storyblocks. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. This one titled, The History and Science of Timekeeping. Ooh, something we take for granted, but some people don't, and they think a lot about it. And I got with me Chuck. Nice, Chuck. Hey, Neil.

Always there for me, Chuck. That's right. No matter the time. Longtime veteran of StarTalk Radio, and you're my co-host for StarTalk Sports Edition. So thanks for making that happen, too. Always a pleasure. And in spite of someone who has no formal athletic background at all, you're actually quite knowledgeable about sports.

I'm very impressed. You know, it's easy to be knowledgeable about something that you've never done. Okay. No, no, no. It's easy to have opinions about things that you've never done. Well, this is true. Yeah. It's easier to be loud and opinionated about that.

Exactly, right. So I love this topic. I know something about timekeeping and history. Everything I know is a tiny subset of what our guest today knows, Anthony Aveni. Anthony, welcome back to StarTalk. Thank you, Neil, for putting me on, or having me on. I see what you did there.

Always fun being with you. You've been on at least your third, possibly fourth time, but it's been a long gap between these, and we've got to have you on more frequently, so I'll make sure. A long time, we might say, a long time. So you're not only an astronomer, you're also an anthropologist. And that's where the history

dimension of your expertise comes in. You're a professor emeritus of anthropology and Native American studies at Colgate University and author recently of a book called Star Stories, recently of a book called star stories constellations and people so you think a lot about just the relationship with between humans our culture and civilization and the sky above that that's a and people pay you to do that yes believe it or not well not anymore because i've just retired so i'm now out on the street selling pencils. Okay. But I started, I mean, trained in astrophysics, a Kit Peek astronomer of old. And I got interested in the Maya, the Maya calendar. But just to be clear, Kit Peek is the name of a mountain in Arizona where we have major national telescopes on location that we all compete to use the observing time on them. And so that's where you did your PhD research? My PhD in Arizona, yeah, through the looking glass,

as it were. And then I got interested in the Mayas, the Maya calendar. And the question was, how in the world did these people achieve such precision and timekeeping and get so engulfed in time measurement if they were in fact without a telescope, without an enlightenment, without a scientific revolution. And I ended up spending the rest of my life, or up to now, engaged in those studies, astronomy and other cultures, which really does teach us to look at the other point of view, the other culture's point of view about how we watch the natural world. And astronomy, I mean, because of that, this background is actually quite rich in cultural diversity because everyone is looking at the same thing. It's the same sky above all of our heads, but you come from a different place, a different time, a different valuation of what you see and think and care about.

And up comes a whole other selection of stories. Same time, different story. Same time, different story. And I wonder if that would apply to aliens. We think about E.T. out there, you know, and sometimes we're so darn sure of ourselves that, oh, they got to be doing it the way we do it. And anthropology has something to say about that. There are some lessons you can learn from studying anthropology

about contact and the other, with a capital O. So let me ask this other question then. In anthropology, I've heard it characterized, I thought quite cleverly, that when the brits went around exploring the world that's code for colonizing the world they would they would come back and write about it and they would write about why where they found was not like them yeah rather than writing why they are like the way they are, right? So it's a different sort of outlook towards other, right? So in your studies, how do you navigate that? Because you are, I presume, a Merkin. You're a Merker. I am as Merkin as President Johnson was.

Okay. So if you've got that, then how do you navigate that when you're trying to interpret what others have done that have come long before you and you have nobody to talk to about it? Well, let me, I am so tempted to give you a quote from an anthropologist. In fact, I'm going to do it since I'm taking over this show right now. I happen to have it handy and it's by Edward Evans Pritchard, which is a rather astute-sounding name. He's a British anthropologist working among the Nuer people, N-U-E-R, of South Sudan, and this is how he sums up a thousand pages of his ethnography, and it's about time. He says, though I have spoken

of time and units of time, the Nuer have no expression equivalent to time in our language, and they cannot, therefore, as we can, speak of time as though it were something actual, which passes, which can be wasted, which can be saved, and so forth. And then he says, newer are fortunate. How do you tap into that? Well, the way I do it is I work with the anthropologists because to be trained in astrophysics, what do I know about anthropology? So I've made it a habit of co-authoring a lot of works by trying to understand anthropological theory. It's really impossible to tap into because the past is gone and the ancient past before writing, the prehistoric past is very gone. So it isn't easy to do, but you have to work together.

So I didn't know that. We have gone and very gone. Is that like, Chuck, if you're bad on stage, you're bad or very bad? No, there's only one level of bad for me. Yeah, you don't have to quantify it. You don't have to qualify the badness. You don't qualify the bad. It's just it. You don't have to qualify the badness. You don't qualify the bad. It's just it.

There's no level. So, Anthony, in timekeeping, there's some obvious things like a day, right, and a month, and certainly the cycle of seasons for crops. Beyond that, why would anyone really care historically? Why would anyone really care historically? Well, you know, I think they wouldn't. They wouldn't care to be the masters of time, that is to delineate a system with the very, very precisely stringing out all of these events and measuring them. Because in most of these cultures, I find the time is the activity itself. It's not some measurement that stands apart. There's milking time. There's nap time. There's lunch time. There's not some measurement that stands apart. There's milking time. There's the nap time.

There's lunch time. There's cocktail time. Time is what you do. But then wise guys like us in the West and the Enlightenment had to come along and take the measure of it. We get it from the Greeks. That's where we get our gears from. We mechanize it. We build clocks because we want to see it as something apart, something that's quite apart from all the events that take place. But in these cultures that I study, it's mostly the activity itself. But isn't it actually the activity itself in our own culture? And time is like an observer of that, but not really a participant? That's a great question.

I think, well, ask me that question at cocktail time, but don't ask it at bedtime. Because you've seen the wristwatches, right? And say, what time is it? And it's beer o'clock. Have you ever seen that? Well, the sun used to be, the sun over the yardarm was the time for cocktails. So it's an astronomical measurement, always comes down to astronomy. So if we didn't have astronomy, how would we have measures of time? Well, I would say you stick a stick in the ground, of course, then you're in astronomy, aren't you? You're in astronomy.

Yeah, that's the way it is. Okay, so if we grew up on Venus, holding aside the fact that we'd be vaporized, no one would ever see the night sky. And Venus has no moon. And it would sort of get light and dark, but very slowly because Venus rotates very slowly. So it seems to me the measurement of time, there are places where you can imagine the measurement of time to be a pointless exercise. Yeah.

And I think that goes in most cultures. But then why is it that people like the Maya or the Inca got so wrapped up in it? And I think- I'm going to ask you why. Well, the bureaucracy had a lot to do with it. Because if you're a bureaucrat, you've got to maintain control of the society. You've got to have control of the worker. You've got to have everybody marching to the same tune.

So those Aztec priests knew what they were doing when they invented all of these deities to go with the names of the days and so on no don't say that you're telling me that highly precise timekeeping of the ancients can be credited to bureaucracy i don't i'm sorry i don't want to hear that you know what it kind of makes sense if you know if the first guy to invent work and workers i can see that might have been the guy that's just like, I got to have something like time. And you got to punch a clock to get you in and out of the temple. Well, surely you've all been to the great glockenspiel of Marian plots, you know. I only say that once.

I was there yesterday, but yeah, go on. In Munich, that clock, that huge clock on the church that goes around and they bang and they gong and comedians have made jokes of it. I think probably even Chuck has. That is a device to keep all the workers in order. You have bells that tell the cutters when they have to cut, the shearers when they have to shear, the packagers when they have to package. And it's damn near like Amazon today. You know, I mean, I think this really starts with the industrial age. Okay, so the difference there is,

it's not that you need to know the time to cut or to pack. It's that someone else wants everyone to be doing that activity at the same time. Bingo. So it's the simultaneity of culture that requires organized timekeeping. Well, it's, yeah, it's the conveyor belt, if you will.

You know, whether you be in the Ford factory in Michigan, assuming there's still a Ford factory in Michigan. There is, yeah. Or you may remember the I Love Lucy episode where the- Yes, with the candies. The candy and the fucking things down their shirt and so on. Well, that's time. Anyone over 60 knows that episode. I don't know if anybody else does.

If you're over 80, they got it from Charlie Chaplin's 1936 film. Now I'm forgetting the name of the film, but it was a... Somebody will phone in what it is. He's caught in the gears. He's caught in the wheels of time. You're seeing him going around getting chewed up by the gears of the clock.

We've seen, we've seen clips of it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it, this, all this leads us to think of time in this more mechanized, precise way. Whereas for the bulk of human history, as far as I know, it never really was that way. Okay. Now that you're retired, are you going to do what every retired person says and get rid of clocks in your house? Well, I haven't quite done that. Although the clock that Colgate gave me for my retirement lost its minute hand. So all I have is the hour hand there. So I'm going by hour time now.

The hour, and I think I can see now I know it's between 12 and one. That's cold. Your retirement gift broke. That ain't right. And they give it to a guy who's a world's expert on time. Wait, wait, did they really not like you? I must've done something bad with the football team. I failed. You failed the quarterback. Then again, that's kind of liberating. I kind of like the idea of just having the hour because now every hour is yours. You know, somebody says, call me at 430. Like, I'm sorry, I can't do that.

Chuck, I got to ask you, have you ever seen a one-handed clock? No, I haven't. Because you can see them. They're around in museums. And I can't say when the last one was made, but it's certainly more than a couple hundred years ago, where you just went by the hour. And in the sundial, it was pretty much the same. You know, one, two o'clock. I'll see you between one and two. Right, right.

The sundial doesn't have a sweep secondhand or a minute hand, right? No, no. And then people would say, you know, well, why don't we meet at the next quarter moon? You know, we'll see at the next quarter moon. Well, is that Tuesday or Wednesday? Doesn't matter. You know, we'll just, when Powhatan attacked the colonists in Virginia, he did it by regulating the tribes to come at the last quarter moon. I mean, that's well established in local history in Virginia. And they seem to get it right. They beat up on the colonists by, well, some of them got there a day early, some a day late.

But a quarter moon is pretty, that's as precise as you. Right. Yeah. Can you get it to the day? I know a lot of my students can't get it to the day. I used to ask them to time it. Some of them would get Tuesday. Some would get Thursday.

Most would get Wednesday, and it would work out. But you got to have a little leeway, I think. So that movie, we just researched that. It's called Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin. Yes, Modern Times. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Very good.

It's in one of my books, but I forget. And how many books have you written? I own most of them, I think, but not this latest one. About. Very good. It's in one of my books. I forget. And how many books have you written? I own most of them, I think, but not this latest one. I've got 30, 35. Depends on what editing I've edited or written. That's what I have in my CD. Is that what's about to collapse on your head behind you in the scene there? No.

Well, those are OP books. Other people's. Oh, they're both OP books. They're doing research. I'm down with OPB. I'm down with OPB. OPB. Yeah. Here, I'll point around if you want to see

go to the other one that's my rabbit hole I hope you enjoy it so Chuck we got questions from our Patreon members I think yes we do I thought that was it I didn't know we had questions no yeah yeah we're not letting you go that easy

I'm done I'm done I didn't know we had questions. No, yeah, yeah. No, we're not letting you go that easy. I'm done. I'm done. I can't do no more. That's great. All right. Okay, let's jump right into it. As a matter of fact, all of our questions have come from our community of Patreon patrons. our community of Patreon patrons.

And so if you are listening to this and you are not a Patreon patron, I encourage you to do so so that your questions can take priority. Plus, it's just not that, I mean, Patreon, for those who don't know, it's not just because people feel charitable as you might know for NPR

or PBS. It's like they want something in return for it. No, that's right. Listen, this is a transaction. We have no problem with that. It's all transactional. We have no problem with that. You support us, and we do things for you.

There's a whole list of stuff. Right. It's like any marriage, okay? It's transactional. All right. Here we go. marriage, okay? It's transactional. All right. All right. Here we go. Here we go.

Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Hello, Neil and Anthony and Chuck. We use Adams. Wait, who is this? Oh, I'm sorry.

This is John David Newman. Hey, John. Okay. Thank you, John, for having a pronounceable name for Chuck. Why did you say it? Why do you think I said it? Wait a minute. Hold on.

Hold on. I had to scroll down the list to get to something that I could pronounce. No, you can't pick questions just so you can pronounce their name. That is wrong. I won't do that anymore. Okay. I just wanted to start off with a pronounceable name. John David Newman.

He says, hey, Neil. Hello, Anthony. Hello, Chuck. We use atoms for the most accurate timekeeping. Could an atom change its rate of vibration? And if so, would we even know if it did? Ooh, that is so good. What a great question. We got to wait till we come back. Ah, damn it. Let's take a quick break. I love that question. We got to wait till we come back. Ah! Ah! Damn it! Let's take a quick break. I love that question. And when we come back, more of StarTalk Cosmic Queries with time, astronomy, anthropological expert, Anthony Aveni. When we return. I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery.

You can see my pottery on my website, CosmicMugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're back. StarTalk. Cosmic Queries. Time and measurement and culture and history.

It's all there. Chuck, good to have you. Chuck, you're tweeting these days? At ChuckNiceComic, yes. ChuckNiceComic. You have to tell people you're a comic? This is lame. No.

I mean, listen, I don't want there to be any doubt. It's like, should I laugh at this? Oh, it says ChuckNiceComic. Oh, yes. I mean, listen, I look at it this way. Sometimes if you go to medical school and you have a practice, you put MD at the end of your name. Just to remind people. Just to remind people, okay, that I'm just not.

That's a good answer. Right. I'm not just Joe Johnson, okay? It's a good answer. Good answer. So, Anthony, we left off with a great question. Here we are, anchored on atomic time for the last five decades, at least, and if that's the measure, how do we know that Adam is not messing with us? Yeah, well, I want to thank Johan for a brilliant

question, or was it John? I think it was John. That's John, yeah. The last I heard, we were keeping time by the vibrations in the cesium atom to something close to 10 to the minus 15 seconds. And I'm sure as John would know, that's a one over 10 with 15 zeros after it. So that's a quadrillionth of a second. Yeah, I mean, if a second is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, the femtosecond is about the width of one of Neil's hairs that I'm looking at right now. So pretty small. I don't know. Neil has some pretty luxurious hair.

It's pretty thick, I've got to tell you. You may notice when you're seeing my image, I didn't use one of my own hairs. You didn't use your hair, singular. We can only make the measurement as accurately as we can make it. And if the cesium atom wants to mess with us, there's no way we're going to know until we can go beyond femto, femto, femto seconds. That's what happened with astronomy. When we thought that the movement of the sun and the moon and measuring the sun's transit at noontime was accurate enough. Earth rotation. Yeah, but it's not accurate enough. And that's why at noontime was accurate enough. Earth's rotation.

Yeah. But it's not, it's not accurate enough. And that's why we went to the cesium atom. So who knows where we end up. So we won't, so we won't know anything about whether the atomic vibrations change until we find something more accurate than it to hold it accountable. And that's the nature of science, isn't it?

You never pretend to have a theory that can't be changed or updated. And so it's a good example of how science operates. Right, but just to be clear, the changing is to make it more precise, not to make it something completely different. Just to be clear. When we're onto something, we're onto it. And we got it. Chuck, you were going to say something? Well, I was just going to say, that makes me think that all measurements then are subject to that same principle.

Yes, every single measurement you've ever made. With height, you name it. Oh, wow. Okay. God, now I don't believe in anything anymore. Yeah, yeah. So, Chuck, how tall are you? Was it?

Exactly. That's great. All right, give me another one. All right. Wow, what a great question. What a great answer, guys. Thanks. Okay, here we go. This right, give me another one. All right. Wow, what a great question. What a great answer, guys. Thanks. Okay, here we go.

This is Sam O'Neill, and I'm not looking for names. It just happened to be that way. Hello, geniuses. And Chuck. That's not what he said. I don't believe that. No, he didn't. I added that in.

Okay. Okay. No, he didn't. I added that in. Okay. Samantha here, and I run and use kilometers instead of miles to measure my workouts. Firstly, because kilometers are shorter, and that allows me to believe that I have less work to do while I'm an individual kilometer. And secondly, you clock up more kilometers and feel happier about the number of kilometers you've run. and feel happy about the number of kilometers you've run.

My question is, if we adjust the scale of time and make years shorter so that the average life expectancy age number becomes higher, what psychological impact would that have on the human race? Whoa. What a profound question couched in a humble brag of our physical fitness. But if I, instead of living to be an average of 80, I live to be an average of 160, forget whatever the measurement is, does the number alone have an effect on who I am and how I think? Yeah, well, I think, Samantha, I don't know if you're old enough to have remembered the move in the 80s to try to kilometrize miles and change to the metric system. In the United States.

Yeah, was it in the 80s or even earlier? No, 70s. In the 70s under President Carter. Yeah, it was under Carter. It didn't happen. But I mean, if it did, we'd be talking different numbers now. My wish has always been to get together with Elon Musk and go to Mars and live there and start a colony and live for thousands and thousands of years. Because Mars revolution period around the sun is closer to two years than to one. And then I'd only be half my age. And my kids and their kids and their kids, kids, kids, kids, kids would then come to think the way Samantha likes to think about kilometers.

They would come to think about years. Chew on that. Wait, wait. So that's the reason why you want to go to Mars? It's the only reason. Not to save the species, not for science. No, it's my own selfishness. I just want a number that tags me younger.

I don't want to be an octo-no-no-do-o-deco-genarian. Okay, so here's my reply to both of y'all, okay? So the solution to this is we adjust the human genome so that you never die. And therefore, you don't have to worry about how many years you just counted for your age. Oh, God, that sounds awful. Adjust your genome. Yeah. That fixes that problem in a different way.

Wow, it does. That creates a whole other set of problems, you know? Like the fact that we would never die. I mean, that would change your psychology of life completely. Yeah. Well, can I tell you a quick story here? Just into the psychology of this? Yeah.

All right. I was, this is a slightly long story, and I hate doing this because I want to really get questions. But it's directly related, okay? Okay. I have never been picked for jury duty. because I want to really get questions, but it's directly related, okay? I have never been picked for jury duty. I always get kicked out after the voir dire part because they ask me questions and they never like my answers, okay? Yeah, I'm the same way except I'm racist.

Okay, so that'll get you out. All right, so that's not the reasons why they get... So I'm there and I made it far enough, like 15 people, to hear the details of the case. All right. Were read to us. So I said, man, maybe I'll get on a case this time. And so the judge reads the particulars of the case. And here is what both sides agree.

sides agree and the defendant was found uh in possession of cocaine um three thousand milligrams of cocaine on the upper west side of manhattan and they were found by an undercover cop and arrested and then so this was done and then i and they saw there any questions about these details and i raised my hand said your honor why did you say 3,000 milligrams of cocaine? That's just three grams, which is, you know, barely the weight of a penny. So why did you say that? They said, well, that's what it's written here. But I said, well, it sounds like you want it to feel like more drugs than it actually is. And while I'm saying this, the whole rest of the potential jurors were looking at me and looking. And so I was out on the street 10 minutes later.

And I might have contaminated, quote, contaminated, just by undoing the units of measure they're using to make something sound bigger. Right? Yes. So here's my two takeaways from that story. One, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the only guy in America trying to get on a jury. Right? And two, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the drug dealer's best friend. I didn't think about it.

I was just thinking about the honesty of the read. No, you're right. So Anthony, that was all about psychology there. Yeah. And I like the way you say 3,000, which is the same way Carl Sagan

used to say billions and billions. 3,000 milligrams. That's so funny. You know, it's so funny. We had a conversation once, Neil, and we were talking about the metric system and how the only people in America who use it are drug dealers. Yes, yes.

Drug dealers are the best. Drug dealers are the only people who know the metric system. They should have been the ones training Americans and we'd all be metric fluid today. There you go. All right. Give me another one. All right.

Let's go to Dustin Fenwick, who says, I've been listening to StarTalk for some time now, and many times I've heard you, Dr. Tyson, talk about how other life forms out of the universe may see human beings in a similar fashion to how we see chimpanzees. So if that is true. With regard to intelligence, yes. Yes, yes. Is it possible that aliens visiting Earth may have a completely different concept and understanding of time than we do?

And what impact do you think this discovery could have on humankind and our understanding of the universe? So, I mean, there's an assumption in that question that there's a contact made and then we understand that they understand time differently than we. Right. And that's, of course, the theme to the movie from a few years ago, Arrival. Anthony, did you see Arrival? Yes, I did. And I was going to mention that. So go ahead, just reflect on. So, Chuck, this is exactly the centerpiece of the difference between this alien visiting intelligence and us. So, Anthony, why don't you take us there?

Well, I'm thinking of the hepto, the hepto digital people who had seven digits rather than the usual ten. Yeah, basically tentacles. They were like heptapods, I think they called them. Also, Ursula Le Guin's work comes to mind. There was an American master's on her. She wrote a book back in the 60s about a hypothetical base 12 culture that we evolved into a base 12 culture.

So all the expression of our numbers and all of our mathematics is totally different that has to be redeciphered that doesn't get to the cognitive part of um dustin's question but it does i think at least it allows us to think that there are other ways of cognizing reality but okay obviously it's it's fiction and it's a novel but is there any uh credence based on your understanding of the diversity of human understanding of time that this could be a real thing out there?

Well, yes, there are. Tell us what it was first. Well, there is a tribe in Borneo which uses a language and uses cognitive elements wherein there is no past and no future. There's no past, present, and future. Everything happens all at once. It's all happening at once. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're saying, I had breakfast this morning. I know that was in the past. I know this wonderful session on StarTalk is going to be over soon, and then I've got to wash some clothes. But imagine having a brain

that doesn't think that way, doesn't think of a past or a future, but everything is in the present and it's reflected in the language and the tenses. There are no tenses. I can't- Because tense is to distinguish past tense and future tense. It's time dependent. And I can't fathom that. But I know Chuck is waving his hand, so I'll bet he can. No, I can't. I was trying to figure out, like, where do you get? It's just like, so I had breakfast this morning now. And so I'm going to the doctor now now. And then I'm going to have dinner later now.

And we're getting married now. But, you know, who is to say why we think that way? But we do. Not as a Homo sapiens, not even as Homo sapiens, because we're talking about a brand of Homo sapiens who do not share our thoughts about past, present and future. But remind us what how the aliens thought in in the movie Arrival. Well, how they. Yeah, that's right. I think the past was conflated with the future, was it not? Yes. Right. So if I remember correctly, there was a time loop. It was a loop.

Yeah. So there was no uniform direction of the future in the past. Time is a circle. Basically, time is a circle. Time is a circle. Now that's interesting because I think whoever wrote that must have had some good understanding of anthropology because many cultures in the world conceive of time cyclically. We conceive of it linearly. We imagine all of the events that happen that we experience are like so many beads on a wire. And then Judeo-Christian theory and ideas teach us that that line or band or wire is tilted upward because those beads move toward the apocalypse, toward the great confrontation, toward the second coming out. So it needed a linear construct in order for there to be an apocalypse. But how can we imagine living in a world where time is not linear?

an apocalypse. But how can we imagine living in a world where time is not linear? Or we can say, well, okay, there's the spring and summer and fall, and of course tomorrow follows today, and the movement of the sun around the earth, if we would have it that way. Which is cyclical. Is cyclical, but still time is linear as we see it, isn't it?

Yeah, because next year is still different from this year. Exactly. Maybe a good model would be a helix, you know, a loop that goes around and then ascends as it goes. I see. So it loops,

but doesn't, so you get the best of both worlds. Wow, look at that. Yeah. You get the looping of time and the forward moving of time. And you get progress

fitting in, don't you? We love progress because as time goes on, it gets bigger and things get better. We saw that in the inauguration speech of President Biden. It's going to get better. We saw that in the inauguration speech of President Biden.

It's going to get better. I love that concept. So what you're saying is if you live in a world where there is no, for lack of a more creative way to think this, technological progress, the next year is identical to this year. Yes. Right. here. Yes. So why distinguish them with strong language about with numbering the years and having New Year's celebration? That seems all artificial now. And it comes from a belief in the idea of progress, which not every culture believes in. Chuck, I'm sorry I interrupted you. No, I was going to say what you just sparked in me is the interest in whether there are cultures that mark time just from events.

So if you're not looking at progress as a demarcation of time, or if you're not looking at things in a linear fashion, then maybe it's just this happened and that becomes time. So it's just a sequence of events without concern about the duration. Right. Time between them. The duration is the key. Yeah. Right, right, right.

We got to take a quick break. We're going to come back. Fascinating stuff. And keep this going. God, this is good. I'm loving it. Okay, this is StarTalk. I'm having an apotheosis.

Time, anthropology, astronomy, all of the above when we return hey we'd like to give a patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons, Douglas Robinson, Michael Kitty, and Ascari Lane. Guys, what would we do without you? Well, we certainly wouldn't be able to make this show. And for those of you who are listening who would like your very own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com slash startalkradio and support us. We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries,

time, culture, anthropology, Anthony of any. Anytime you say those other three words, Anthony is right behind the door. Right. Ready to walk in to straighten things out. Anthony, thanks for being on StarTalk. Thank you for inflating my ego.

You need to know you're retired. You know, we got to help you out here. Retired for how many years at Colgate? Just a couple. Just packed it in a couple years. A couple years at Colgate. I don't keep time anymore. You got it.

Okay, Chuck, give me some more questions because we're in cosmic queries mode. Yes. Let's go to Ben Butler, who says, hello, Neil, Dr. Venny. My question is, how are time zones affected with the keeping of time? Time zones affected with the keeping of time. Do they have any part to play with timekeeping or just a way to tell time in different countries? Sorry if this sounds silly. No, no. Anthony, what's up with time zones?

Why doesn't the whole world have one time? Thank you, Ben, for your question. Why don't we all have one time? Blame it on the railroads. Blame it on the high speed of travel, not now, but in the 19th century, when you could step on a train and go from New York to Cleveland in a matter of less than a day. Well, we regulate our time, of course, by where the sun is. So you've got time in the station regulated by the sun. And then once you get on the train, you're in a different place. So we've got time on the train and time off the train. You have to have some agreement about what

the time is going to be. So we all get together and say, hey, let's share the time of the 15th, 30th, 45th, 60th, and so on, multiples of 15 meridians. Now where I live- So these are longitude lines. Longitude lines. It happens to be a longitude these are longitude lines on Earth. Yeah, longitude lines. It happens to be a longitude line that passes near Albany somewhere. So I'm west of that time. So I got to set my clock back.

And the people who are out on Cape Cod have to set it the other way. And we all agree to that. Wait, wait, just to be clear. So you and everyone in Cape Cod are in the same time zone, but you are west and east of each other, which means the sun is not in the same part of the sky. If we stuck a stick in the ground and made the sundial, we would get a different result for the time. From each other.

So you're saying rather than it be noon for you at a different time than noon for Cape Cod, you want to agree on a noon no matter what the sun is doing. Right. So we want to have what you might call a mean noon or an average noon. And that's what zone time is. And, of course, then you have to have some place to begin the day. Grim it! Well, you begin it out actually in the middle of the islands, in the middle of an ocean where it doesn't matter too much whether it's Sunday or Monday. But we've been forced into that because of high speed travel. And that all started with the railroads. Wow.

Wow. That is great. That's where the big ben clock got started too big wow that is great okay all right keep going chuck all right steve solomon says hello neil hello anthony hello chuck and the whole team i'll bet chuck can pronounce my name okay thanks buddy um my question is does the arrow what's his name again what's his name his name is steve solomon steve solomon okay yeah uh my question is does the arrow of time always point forward for us, giant bags of mostly water. Speak for yourself.

Now, he says, however, the math supports time in both directions. Indeed it does. For most things, yes. Yeah. So if the math works, can we find a physical representation of the math or can that happen? Well, Steve, I've had two Steve Solomons in my teaching career. You may be one of them. Both of them were wise guys, but it's a good question. The arrow of time. Because teachers never forget students.

Never forget. The arrow of time. Because teachers never forget students. Never forget. One of them I flunked out and he came back when he was in his 20s, but did very well and filmed him. But anyway, that's enough about me. You know, I think Steve's question depends on what we want to conceive of as reality. You know, we can define an arrow of time that goes either way.

But the way we've got it down, that arrow goes forward from the past into the future. Unless you can get a time machine joke, you know, and make the time go backwards, travel faster than the speed of light. This is the reality we have devised to understand how events take place in the world. Sounds like I'm slipping away on the question, but I'm really not. What do you think? No. Let me see if I understand what you just said. All right. So you're saying because we experience the world with an arrow of time going forward, all of our language and everything we've developed about our thoughts and civilizations orbits that, so to speak. And so we don't need to reckon with an hour of time that moves the other way.

But if there were such a thing, then we deal with that. Right. And, and, and things would break before you let go of them. Right. That would be the order of events. But how mean it is that we've invented mathematics so as to deal with that. And that opens up our imagination to all kinds of possibilities that we wish we could experience. There are limitations in this universe. And you'd see a scrambled egg unscrambled and go back into a shell in the shell. And we would see that and say, that's normal. Yeah.

And I can see it on a video. On a video. Play it backwards. Yeah, yeah. So things that move backwards in time that look irreversible only because that's our life experience. Yeah. And that had been our life experience,

then cracking an egg and dropping it into a pan would say, oh my gosh, how did you do that? Well, you know, Neil, not to get too serious, but we also devised the law of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, which is that you're always going to go from organization toward disorganization. But then we define what organization is and what disorganization is. So it's so dependent on how we live, and that's the anthropology of it.

That's the anthropology of it. And I like Einstein's, was it Einstein's quip? Time is defined to make motion look simple. Yeah. Wow. Is that deep make motion look simple. Yeah. Wow. Is that deep? That's great. Yeah.

So, Chuck, let's do lightning round because we've been luxuriating on these other questions. Who cares? I like it. Okay. So, Anthony, pretend you're on the evening news and you're interviewed for two minutes. And so it's soundbite answers. Okay, let's go. Okay, guys, here we go.

This is Roman Precup. Precup. Okay, let's go. Okay, guys, here we go. This is Roman Precup. Okay, Roman says this. Since the earth is slowing down, how long will it take until we need so many leap seconds that there will not be a rule that a minute has 60 seconds? So you got to put so many seconds in that- Just change the whole damn system. Change the whole system. Yeah.

Yeah. Anthony, what's up with that? I'm going to say less than a million years. What would you think, Neil? Yeah. So it's tiny right now. And we're doing good with the leap seconds. I mean, we're hanging on.

Anthony, how many have had 25 or so leap seconds in the last? Yeah, we have. 50 years. So leap second every couple of years. Okay. So when does it reach just where we're actually taking water in a bucket and, you know, becomes that? Well, you know, what we'll do is we'll do leap hours and we'll do what we did in the Gregorian calendar reform. We just whacked off 10 days, knock out 10 days.

And tomorrow, today's the 4th, tomorrow will be the 14th. Yeah, so the corrections might become greater than leap seconds, leap minutes, leap hours, leap days. Interesting. So just to be clear, from the, what

do we call the people who are experts at timekeeping, not metrologists. Chronologists, maybe? Chronologists. From the chronologists I've spoken with, they don't want to change the definition of the second because so much anchors on that. They'd rather just add more seconds into the day

because you could just make the second a little longer, right? And that absorbs, it eats every correction you'd ever need to make to it and put you in motion for another million years or so. But we have so much depending on that definition, we're keeping it. Well, we used to have Roman numerals. We don't have much left of those anymore.

No, yes, we do for the Super Bowl. The last bastion of Roman numerals. But not 10 and 50. Did you know that? That Super Bowl 10 was not X. It was 1-0. Yeah, and 50, I think the reason why they didn't have it for 50, you knew that.

I wrote a lot about this. I tweeted about it. Because when we were at Super Bowl XLIX, which is a lot of Roman numerals are stacked there, I said to myself, hmm, if we go to Super Bowl 50 and all of that just becomes an L, then it's just Super Bowl, right? You'd have two Ls, Super Bowl and then an L, and then you wouldn't be able to parse that. And sure enough, they made it F50.

And, you know, when they went from 9 to 10, they didn't like the X because people were Googling up, whatever Googling up was in those days, and finding nasty websites. Oh, X, X websites. Interesting. What was Superbowl 30? That would really get you in there. Triple X. Why are all my searches for Superbowl 10 ending up with a guy delivering a pizza? So much for the lightning round. Anthony, you failed that first test. Let's try them again.

All right, here we go. This is Robert Weaver, and Robert says, Good afternoon. If space-time is able to be bent by gravity, assuming humans could ever control that bending, could we travel across folded and then unfolded parts of space and time instantly? Would we have passed to either side. Okay.

And then he just goes on to give you more examples of that. And then he says, hey, thank you guys, both of you, for inspiring us. P.S. Chuck, I like you too. Okay. Okay. That's the Chuck Amendment to each. Exactly, right. You know, I'll take that though.

You know, maybe I'm not inspiring, but at least I'm liked. But so Anthony, let me ask, let me broaden that a little bit. So our modern sort of scientific culture tells us about relativity and the curving of space-time and the distortion of time.

And is that just our culture's sense of time? And then when we die off, we're in the apocalypse, there'll be some other one, and then we'll just be in the archives of how people thought about time? I'll raise you one by suggesting that all of geometry is part of our culture because we are Greek. The very idea of thinking about geometry, whether it's Euclidean or non-Euclidean, is a Western idea. Show me one evidence of geometry in any culture other than one that came through the Middle East and Greece, and I'll give you a dollar. And of course, the bending of space and time requires geometry to see it, to calculate with it, to predict with it. Well, as far as we know. Yeah, as far as we know. We are talking in our own language.

The answer to Robert's question is show me how to do it. But you can sure do it in your mind. But I can't imagine an operational way of doing it. And I can't even imagine conceiving of it in any other way than geometrical. So it's part of our culture. Wow, so it might be, I hadn't thought about this. If we did not have geometry in our tap roots, we may have never ultimately arrived at relativity.

Yeah, you know how the story goes. We don't have time to do it, but I talk about it in more than one of my books. The whole geos metros, the measurement of the city, measuring the city is where this starts. And in the Greek city, they had orbs, Aristotle even talks about this, orbs of citizens who cluster around the center, who orbit around the center. And then the intellectual thought turned to ordering the universe above the way they were ordering the city. So the whole idea of geometry starts in the city and then moves to the sky and then moves on to Einstein.

Wow. That's anthropology. That's why I do the anthropology. That's Western anthropology. Interesting. Yeah, very good. All right. Chuck, keep it coming.

Okay, here we go. This one. This is from Nick Stark. Sounds like an alter ego for a superhero. Or Tony Stark's son. Or Tony Stark's son. Yeah, Nick Stark. Hello, Dr. Tyson.

Could you explain one of your most favorite OEDs or PEDs related to space-time or just physics in general. So do you have a partial differential equation that you actually lay down at night and cuddle up with? Do you have an ordinary differential equation that's half framed on your desk? I thought it was either that or maybe some kind of disease of the intestine that he wanted. I know, right? Are you afflicted by the… I'm not afflicted at all for that. So, in calculus… I think Nick Stark, by the way, I just want to say Nick Stark sounds like the name of a detective in a noir film.

Nice. That too. That too. That does. It's got that ring. It has that ring, yes. Got that fast talking Yes, it does. Yes, exactly. It's just like, she came to me and I And you got the coat and the hat. It was a rainy night and when

she walked in, I knew it was trouble. So I would just say, just so people, in calculus, there are equations. One of the great glories of calculus is it enables you to calculate using variables that are changing simultaneous with each other. And this is basically intractable using any other kind of math that preceded calculus. And so there's a kind of equations that exist in calculus that allow you to just pry forward watching something unfold with multiple forces and multiple variables changing at the same time. And with these, you have what are called differential equations that do that. They're partial differential equations, PDEs, these sorts of things.

So my favorite of these is the set of equations that came out of Einstein's work that describe the curvature of space and time. And it is this simple equation, it looks simple, but the calculations are hard, that tell you how much mass and energy will then give you how much curvature on the other side. And so for me, that's for me. Anthony, do you have any favorite equations? Well, you know, I got an A-minus in DiffEQ. I was a math minor and a physics major, so I do know well what you're talking about.

Wait, Chuck, he's on a first-name basis. DiffEQ? DiffEQ. Differential equations. Listen, that's the nickname basis. That's beyond first-name basis, okay? That's a nickname basis. That's beyond first name basis. OK, that's like nicknames. Yeah, that's like I call Barack Obama Barry.

If you're on a first, if you're on a nickname basis with your equation. Exactly. I'm working with these two silly dudes. I'm working with these two silly dudes. I'm going to try to put the anthropological twist on this because I think what Nick is talking about is conflating a whole large number of concepts into one magic equation. They had everything that they ever measured or even submeasured, multiples or parts of 260. They had the period of Mars measured according to 260. It happens to be three times 260. They had the period of Venus, the synodic period of Venus measured that way. In fact, it's in the ratio of eight to five with the period of Venus and the year and a whole bunch of other things. I know you're dying to know what 260 is. Well, it's 13

times 20. 20 is the number of digits on a human body. That is, unless you're a shop teacher. The number of layers of heaven, 260. Now this is where you guys are all going to get really serious when I tell you this. You're going to drop your jaws because it's the jaw-dropping number. Gestation period of the human female. Now, I know that answer isn't going to satisfy a person who's into differential equations, but the important thing is that you always look for expressions, numbers, equations that can envelop the largest number of phenomena that you see. And for the Maya, it was the gestation period of the human female, the gestation period being the mother of all numbers, as I call it. Well, let me tell you, Dr. Avani, I'm just going to say

that that was a very elegant answer in the face of our being silly. I'm, I am so impressed. That was, that was, he put, he pulled that one out of the trash. I mean, that was, that was incredible.

That was incredible. He pulled our stuff out of the trash. I mean, yeah. Dusted it off. Yes. That was, listen,

you, I bow to you, sir. That was amazing. Well, to be honest, I pulled it out of my butt, but that,

that was, no, no, no. Wait, wait, Anthony, I thought it out of my butt. But that was amazing. Wait, wait, Anthony. I thought that isn't the human gestation period slightly longer than 260? I'm thinking up around two. No, it's 256.7. But what's a 3.5 among people who don't care? Yeah, I thought it was longer than that.

I'm going to look on that. I'm going to get back to you on that. Check me out. I'll check you out on that. I'll bet you the name of an asteroid. Okay. A little shorter. But somebody bet you the name of an asteroid. Okay. A little shorter, but somebody will have the answer for us instantly. Yeah, I think it's up closer to 280 days, unless the Mayan had different gestation periods from other homo sapiens.

That can be. That certainly can be. Well, let me just tell you this. After three gestation periods, I know that the post-suffering time is 18 years. Okay. Let me just say that. Calculated that. So, Anthony, you come back with that multiple and tell us what you got.

That was an excellent postpartum on your part, Chuck. All right. We got to cut it. We got to actually quit there. No. All right, dude. Anthony Aveni on our website, anthonyfaveni.com? Yeah, anthonyfaveni.com.

Excellent. .com. Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Thanks again to my friend and colleague, now retired, Anthony Aveni. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you to keep looking up.