We all have learned 3 tenses in English grammar: Present, Past & Future and everyone conform that future only exists in our subconscious mind. In reality, there is no existence of future as time travel is impossible till now.
Before having the discussion on present, let's talk about the past. There shouldn't be any questions against the existence of past as we all have memories of past and everything that has happened before is all past.
Now, let's come to the topic 'The Existence of Present'. In bare eyes, it might seem that past and present are the only tense that exist in reality. Right? Well, not exactly.
Before hopping into the topic, we need to understand the physics of observing. What is the physics of observing something? We can only see those objects that reflect light. Our eyes are the receivers of that light. The object that reflects all the observable light is seen as white and the object that doesn't reflect any observable light is seen as black. In fact, it can never be seen. I ain't going deeper into this topic. The only thing we need to remember from here is "We only see an object when the light is reflected from that and our eyes receive the light."
But when light comes from something or reflects from something, it takes time. In our daily life, it doesn't seem like that. But on some large scales, the difference can't be unnoticed. For example, light takes 8.3 minutes to reach earth from the sun. The light coming from the star Alpha Centauri takes 4 years to reach earth though it is the nearest star to the sun.
So, it means when we are looking at the sun, we are seeing a sun that was there 8 minutes ago in the past. We aren't seeing the present situation of the sun. And if we look further, we will see that we are observing the past more.
In a nutshell, it means when we are looking at something, we are seeing its past condition, not the present. The time difference can be very little or huge but it will be always past.
The time difference depends on distance. It isn't possible to see something without a minimum amount of distance. So, there will be always a time difference and we will always be observing the past. Isn't it amazing? Wherever we look, we are looking at past.
If somehow we manage to see something without a distance, still our brain will take 13 milliseconds to process that visual. So, again we will be observing the past.
However, scientists at the University of Aberdeen and the University of California, Berkeley discovered that human vision is up to 15 seconds behind real-time and we function on a previously unknown visual illusion. We don't examine every single visual image we encounter in a moment in time, but instead form an average based on what we have perceived over the past 15 seconds. By pulling together objects to appear more similar to each other, our brain tricks us into perceiving a stable environment. Living in the past can explain why we do not notice subtle changes that occur over time. We will talk about this issue in detail another day.
In conclusion, we are living in a past world. Everything we see, hear, and feel is past. But for our day-to-day life, this past illusion has great importance and for simplicity, we observe this past illusion as present.
Written by: Tasnim Ferdous
0 Comments