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Wedged Between Atoms of Time

sponsored by The Library of Dresan
The Library of Dresan

Wedged Between Atoms of Time

Since the proverbial beginning of time, people have wondered about time's smallest limit.
Through proverbs about the end of a journey, Zeno made us wonder how we can get anywhere
when after each halfway point we still find a new journey with another halfway point before us.
Newton and Leibniz rode these halfway points to infinity with their calculus to calculate speed
only to have Lynds and Ichiye point out that at the instant of infinity there's no speed left.

Modern physicists seem to think that there are atoms of time: tiny but finite moments of time,
irreducible knots in the sea of strings (or graph of loops or tangle of physiosemiotic connections,
depending on your religion) beyond which further attempts to measure break down, beads of existence
which refuse to be pinned down and erupt into glittering chains as soon as you pressure them too closely.

What if they're wrong? Or, to put it another way, what if they're more right than they imagined?
What real difference is there between an infinity of time and a finite time that can be infinitely divided?
If we truly understood the glittering chains of time, who's to say that we couldn't focus our attention
and find ourselves a thousand new moments standing between two frozen instants in time?

- Dr. Daniel Riverstone, "Wedged Between Atoms In Time", collected in "One Last Thought" edited by Nat Kintaro.