Time-Space Continuum

Yes, my birthday was yesterday, and it was a good day. I turned 29, but Tricia thinks that she has tricked me into thinking that I am 30. To keep her happy, I will continue to let her think that I think I am 30, but I know she will always be older than me. So, to celebrate, my wife treated me to some . It was delicious. That is our favorite restaurant here. But this blog isn't about my birthday, it is about the preconceived idea of time. I believe that my father is an expert on this subject because when I was younger he unleashed a tiny morsel of his knowledge on me. I had been asking people why it was that each year seems like it goes by faster than the previous year. I got many answers such as, "you are more aware of the time." or "you are busier than you were, so time goes by faster." none of these really satisfied me. It wasn't until I asked my dad that I got an answer that made complete common sense. He said, "look at it like this. From the day you are born until your first birthday you have lived your entire life in one year. From your first birthday until your second birthday you have lived only half of your life in one year. From your second birthday until your third birthday you have live one third of your life in one year, and so on..." I am in the one thirtieth of my entire life, and last year I was only in the one twenty-ninth. So, in comparison to your entire life, each year does get shorter. It's all relative. So perceived time is in relation to something. 30 years could seem like a long time to a ten year old, but to someone that is 90 it may seem like a short time. Even seconds, minutes, and hours are in relation to something. it takes 23 hours and 56 minutes for the earth to make one complete 360 degree rotation. Now who came up with the number 24? I don't know, but it doesn't matter it could have been 10 and still been one rotation. So if 24 hours is one rotation of the earth, and 1 year is one rotation around the sun, what happens if we are able to inhabit other planets? When you are on earth talking to someone on jupiter on the phone and they say, "Hey, I will call you back in 10 minutes." it could be hours later when they finally call but to them they may have called you 2 minutes early. It would depend on the rotation of their planet. Which brings up the point, if you lived on a planet that spun faster, would your work days be shorter in relation to earths work days. If so, then I would work on the fastest rotating planet and take my vacations on the slowest rotating planets. What would the different increments of time be called on another planet? All the good ones are taken like hours, minutes, seconds, and even jiffy (which is an actual value like .000000000000000000000003 seconds in physics or .01 seconds in electronics). Right now they say stuff like "one year on mars is equal to 687 days on earth." But days on mars aren't 23 hours and 56 minutes. A day on mars is equal to 24 hours and 37 minutes. But again those hours and minutes are earth hours and minutes, so for every planet we end up inhabiting, we will need to come up with another system to tell time. Kind of like the english and metric systems we have now. This means more conversion charts. I am not looking forward to living on other planets. This all came about because yesterday (my birthday, in case you forgot) someone at work asked me, "do you feel different now that you are 29?" I said, "not really." But what I wanted to say was, "Of course not. Are you silly? I have spent the last 365.25 days getting used to, and easing my way into 29. It's not like I went to bed last night 28 and woke up today with an entire year of experience that I didn't have when I fell asleep." It is kind of like watching kids grow up. Keira hasn't seemed to change in size to me since the day we brought her home from the hospital (except for that stint of basic training and tech school) because I have been with her as she grows. I am accustomed to it. I know she is bigger than she used to be, because we have pictures. I just don't know when she got bigger. Wouldn't that be scary if you went to bed with a one-year-old-sized child, and woke up with a two-year-old-sized child the next day. Ok, I don't know what else to say about this, but I am sure you all understand. Have a great day (or whatever you call it where you're from.)