Time is a slippery subject. Like Socrates’ attempts to futilely define virtue, time is an ever present concept that elusively escapes mankind’s grasp. Time is a richly varied concept within human history, but even that is difficult to understand. Behaviorally modern humans have been around for approximately 50,000 years. That is quite a long time considering the entire span of recorded history is only around 5,000 years. Yet humans have been around for much longer. In fact, anatomically modern humans have been mucking about for 200,000 years. People who look just like you and I have been on this planet for 200,000 years and we’ve only managed to record less than 3 percent of it.

Homo sapiens have had quite a number of ideas about what time is and how it works; many of these ideas are outlined in our reading Einstien’s Dreams. What I find particularly interesting, however, is modern physics’ take on the subject. One concept is that of imaginary time. Keep in mind that the word ‘imaginary’ is not meant to imply a departure from reality, but rather a different kind of time. This is a time that runs orthogonal to what we know as ‘real’ time and it comes from Quantum theory. This imaginary time along with the three directions of space make up Euclidean space-time. Steven Hawking and James Hartle have proposed that imaginary time and space together are finite in extent, but without boundary. A way to conceptualize this is to think of the surface of a balloon. Imaginary time along with space is the surface of the balloon. You can go all the way around the balloon and never leave the surface. This is interesting in that it seems a parallel to a cyclical way of viewing time. Real time marches on in a more or less linear fashion while imaginary time seems to circle around. This view of time is quite intriguing on a philosophical level as to how our universe came to be as well as on a scientific level since it helps to avoid singularities in the Big Bang theory.

I have to wonder, though, what the real impact of this is. Yes, it is fascinating to daydream about, but in the end what does this mean in the grand scheme of things. To me, generally, it seems that science attempts to figure out the truth of reality by looking outside ourselves while religion attempt the same by looking within. Both are on the same quest for “the answer”, only taking different paths to this end.

What if humans were to go extinct tomorrow? What would the consequences be? The health of the planet would surely improve. The impact on the universe would most certainly be negligible. Perhaps the only loss would be in the Universe no longer learning about itself.