Copenhagen:Jens Olsen’s Astronomical Clock

Tick tock, tick tock... I was alone in the Copenhagen Town Hall with Jens Olsen’s Astronomical Clock. Observing the gears moving calmly and unstoppably, I was alarmed by the flow of time, second by second, minute by minute and hour after hour. It was a moment I was more conscious than ever of time. As I type down these letters, I am taken forward by the wheel of time, whether I am conscious of it or not.

Jens Olsen spent decades completing his calculation of the clock until he was 60 years old. It was an inspiration from his visit to the astronomical clock at Strasbourg cathedral when he was 25. Years have elapsed and the production of the clock started in 1943. Jens Olsen didn't live to the day when the clock ticked its first tock on 15 December 1955, preciously the same day in history 61 years ago. (What a coincidence. I only realized that it was the same day just now.)

He died in 1945, 10 years before the clock was completed. It was a project of time, taking 50 years of design and 12 years of constriction. It was a project of precision, comprising of 12 movements and 15,448 parts, with the fastest gear completing a revolution every ten seconds and the slowest ever 25,753 years. Time is both fast and slow. No one would live long enough to witness the complete move of the slowest gear.

Clock is among the oldest inventions that facilitates our individual schedules and more importantly, a social meter for group activities. Life would be a mess without clocks. What we read from the clock constitutes "time". It is the periodic motion that constitutes standard unit for this elusive concept. The motion of sun across the sky forms the primitive measurement of time with a sundial. Astronomical discoveries provided primitive yet reliable cycles as reference of time. Jens Olsen's clock faithfully shows the times of sunrise and sunset. At the right section of the clock, the top dial presents a star map over Denmark and the motion of the earth axis over a period of 25,753 years. The right dial demonstrates the solar system with Mercury, Venus, out Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune around the sun.

Our initial concept of time derives from such cyclical natural phenomenon as the stars, seasons, tidal waves. As human beings step into modern physics, "second" is set more precisely by measuring the electronic transition frequency of cesium atoms.

I stood in front of the transparent cabinet containing the clock. As I observed the time equation, the local time in Copenhagen, the actual solar time, and the perpetual calendar, I began to wonder what time is. What is the force that pushes a baby to become an adult? Time is always measure with a reference, either with cyclical stars or periodic events. Yet, is time a real property? As I measure the length of a tree with my ruler, I can feel the tree. As I measure the elapse of time with my watch, where is the time that I am counting? Does time really exist? Or is it merely an invented concept for the convenience of living?

If time exists, why is it that no one has seen it? Indeed, "being visible" is not a necessary condition of "existence". Air is invisible, yet its effect was undeniable, thus proven existence. If time does exist, how do we prove it? The effect of time might be uttered as obvious: aging, changes, an irreversible progression from the past to present and to future. Jens Olsen spent almost all his lifetime crating a clock that registers time in a precise manner. Time trickles away and he died without witnessing the birth of his own masterpiece. The effect of time on age, on life and death is undeniable. However, is it the effect of time that ignites all the changes? Correlation does not imply causation. Are these natural processes of metabolism that happens regardless of "time" or "no time"?

If there is no time, that would be a neat end to all the complex questions regarding the nature of time.

For the sake of discussion, I would suppose there is time, be it subjective or objective. The next question is when does it start? When it will end? This question might in itself be a wrong one. Time might resemble a ladle of water. It is not necessarily to have a beginning or an end, just like there is no tail or head to the ladle of water. The quest of beginning of time is, however, a reasonable due to the perceived linear property of time. Time flows from the past to present and to the future. The arrow of time does no go backwards. A baby ages with time into a winkled person. Plato believe that time had no beginning as there is always an earlier time to any particular point of time. Is it because our knowledge boundary or limited life span prevented us from knowing a point where there was no earlier point at all?

The big bang theory stated that time has a starting point. Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe used to be an extremely tiny, hot, organized, expanding material. The quantum field keeps expanding and cooling down, allowing atoms to clump into stars and galaxies, among which the Earth is one. Cosmologists widely agree that our universe accelerate the expanding process under the effect of dark energy filling the space. If the starting point 13.8 billion years ago is the beginning of time, then what gave rise to the initial shape of the universe? Does the Big Bang come out of nowhere? If we are contented with the "present", with the universe we are in right now, then what comes before the Big Bang can be perceived as irrelevant to human beings. Or rather, as suggested by the "multiverse theory", the universe human beings exist in is one of the many universes born out of many big bangs. Each has a boundary and a time frame. The infinite space and time is only relevant when we frame it to our existence and utilization. This is somehow a utilitarian approach to the perplexing question of time.

If time has a beginning, then does is has an end? If our past is finite, does our future expand infinitely?

Another "big bang" of explosion might put an end to all lives on earth, registering the end of time. Yet, this is only the end of time through the lens of earth. To the big universe, such an event might be the beginning of the next cycle or it is just one event in the vast field of time. The boundary of discussion will make of huge difference to what we perceive as the end. Every end of something old might be the beginning of something new. Such linguistic and philosophical dilemma obscures the discussion of infinity of the future to some extent.

As I gaze at Jens Olsen's clock and see for real the moving of thousands of gears, I sense an impulse to make better use of the next second. Time, through the lens of physics, is about periodic motions and a meter that defines concepts including speed and velocity. Through the lens of life, is about a past to be remembered, a present to be lived and a future to be shaped. Indeed, the span of civilization over thousands of years belittles a life of several decades. Yet, a tick of one second on my watch expand what times means to me. The lucky thing is that life goes on and moments can be lived behind the veil of ignorance of what time really is. In life, it is felt, rather than defined.

#Copenhagen #Travel #Time #Europe