Perspectives on Time (Part Deux)

One of my favorite riddles is posed, "You walk 100 yards due south, then turn and walk 100 yards due directly east. You then turn and walk 100 yards directly north. At this point, you find yourself standing in the exact place that you started from. Where are you?"

The answer is "At the north pole," but the riddle brings up a rather interesting point regarding our frame of reference. Typically our understanding of space and time doesn't allow the scenario described in the riddle to hold true. In a classical fram of reference, it makes no sense to be able to leave a point and, making 2 turns and traveling in the cardinal direction, return to the point that you started.

I've often wanted to undertake a study of what I have called "frame of reference physics," in which apparent anomalies such as this one are studied. The reason that I find it so interesting is that our system of measure in terms of both time and global geography are fairly arbitrary, and yet we base our entire understanding of the "laws" of physics on an arbitrary frame of refernce.

(What the hell am I talking about?) All our laws of phsyics are based on time, in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, and days, but these are all arbitrary units. We want to tell ourselves they're not. We say that one day correlates to one rotation of the earth around its axis. This is not the case however. Assuming (for simplicity) that a year consists of 365 days, the earth actually only rotates 364 times, with one full "rotation" being accounted for by the earth's trip around the sun. From this skewed system of "days" we decide to break down 24 hours, into 60 minutes and further 6o seconds. Then we base our understanding of physics and mechanics on this system. Seems arbitrary.

So what types of mysteries will frame of reference (FOR) phsyics study? Well that's simple. First I intend to return to the source of my interest (the north pole) and prove that the reason that Santa is able to deliver all the presents in a single day is that, at the North Pole, all the "time zones" converge, and time as we have created it does not effectively exist. If Santa were to stand at the norht pole, he would not experience earthly time. Further, if he were to leave the pole for a day, he could easily just walk one turn around counterclockwise and earn that day back. It also explains why Santa is able to live forever, without aging.

Off course, since we know that it's always Christmas at the north pole, a corollary to our prior FOR Law would be that at the beginning of time, the initial moment of creation, was in fact Christmas (i.e. t(0)=Christmas). We can then learn that Christmas is not only the birthday of Christ Jesus, but in fact, the birthday of the Universe, which would kinda make sense if you're Christian, and would go a long way in proving that we're right.

Other things to study would be the behavior of light at 2am of daylight savings time, when the clocks change backwards. We would also examine the relationship between the relative speed of earth's rotation (greater at the equator, essentially 0 at the poles) and centrifugal force (which we're told is an imaginary force, but in FOR physics, is very real) to explain why elves live at the pole, and tall people come from Africa. (This is also compounded due to the lesser effect of gravity at the equator dues to the ellipsoid shap of the earth, not pulling as hard on aAfrican people, which also is why white men can't jump...it's gravity's fault) Finally, we'll determine if people living at or near the equator are more likely to get sick due to the drastic temperature changes associated with constantly switching from winter to summer everytime they cross the line.

These are only the beginning, as there are many other scenarios begging to be examined. One day, I would like to examine how math would work with we only had 8 fingers rather than 10, since this is likely the basis of our system. (As a preview, couting would occur, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21...etc. 5x2=12. and 4 squared= 20.) The rules are the same, but the answers appear different. You would however find that prime numbers occur in the same order, though traditionally 7, 11, 13 becomes 7, 13, 15...these are prime in our new system, which assumes and eight fingered frame of reference (though you may note that in this system we'd still have ten fingers, but the digits 10, would equal eight in our current system and 8 wouldn't exist, just like 10 is not a single digit now)

This is intended to serve as an overview of frame of refence physics. Hopefully this will help to answer some of life's greatest mysteries.