TIME AND ETERNITY

[Music] hello there welcome to moody Institute of Science say do you like mystery stories well we have one for you the tradition of all good mysteries is complete with a haunted house and ghosts out of the past a sight seems a strange place to look for ghosts doesn't it but our story is true before we're finished I think you'll agree that truth is stranger than the strangest fiction the mystery is time the haunted house is space in our true story the ghosts travel at the speed of light and they come straight out of the paths your path yes time is a mysterious thing have you ever to define time the harder you search for a definition the more elusive it become we're going to explore the mystery of time and the laboratory before we find the ghosts we'll have to sort through some facts but we'll find them very real oh that's great mr. Marco Siena is one of our skilled technicians here at woody institute of science in addition to a rich background of photographic experience he's shown a more than usual interest in this subject of time Pete I suppose you could tell us just a bit about the equipment that you use and I'd be glad to most important piece of equipment is right here it's a super high-speed camera I like to call it a time microscope it does the time what the microscope does to physical dimension it enlarges a period of time instead of a bit of matter how fast camera be running on this tape about 3,000 frames per second let's see that'll stretch one second into about two minutes won't it yes two minutes and five seconds to be exact and this will give us an opportunity to observe some interesting properties in liquids we're using milk in this experiment because it photographs easily I'll adjust the flow until it appears a firing trickle to the eye there would you start the camera doctor now ready the trickle of milk and the splash look quite different now don't they but they aren't any different the liquid is behaving in its usual manner we've merely changed our time reference [Music] did you ever drop a steel ball into a bowl of milk it's probably no good reasons why you should have but it does make an interesting high-speed study what the high-speed camera checks the fall and the steel ball seems to float slowly downward to disappear beneath the surface of the liquid then when you've almost forgotten about it the ball slowly bounces back don't be confused now this isn't one of the ghosts we were talking about it's just the milk that follows the ball into the air never question what appears to be normal as once your way of staying locked up in your time compartment the study time we must venture beyond the ordinary and when we do it opens up a whole new realm Pete would you help me with an experiment sure just take the egg and stand right over there that's fine now will you balance the egg on your head please hey wait a minute if you have in mind what I think you do no thanks but I'll be happy to set it up over here for you well maybe that would be safer people you know if William Tell had been in the chicken business instead of the Apple business the story might have gone something like this [Music] of course the flight of that air are required but a tiny fraction of a second but the high-speed camera slowed it down until we could study the entire action [Music] recently at the University of California at Los Angeles a high-speed camera study was made of that split-second involved in a head-on auto crash [Music] that's what happens when we crack up at only 28 miles an hour not many of us keep it down to that anymore do we the bit disconcerting to realize that just a fleeting moment of this stuff we call time can introduce you to a whole eternity the high-speed camera tells us part of the story of time but strangely enough the time compressor will show us even more the time-lapse camera for the time compressor is just the opposite of a high speed camera instead of slowing things down it speeds them up the world about us is alive with action and movement that we miss because it's too slow there's a veritable symphony of movement that we never see because we're locked up in our own little time compartment the time compressor can help us break out of our time prison here is a good example of movement that we can't see let's set the clock now for 11 o'clock right the clock is running the hands are moving all the time you can't see them move oh if you watch long enough you could tell that they had moved but you can't see the movement that is not unless we use the time compressor did it seem to you that the hands of the clock speeded up and slowed down well actually they didn't change speed at all the clock kept right on running its standard clock speed you've been watching it for a whole day now we just changed your time reference by changing the interval like this every time the lights go on the camera takes one picture if you're still not convinced about that clock maybe this will help that isn't the magicians rose to flower right out of the garden this time you watch the clock and the rose we are now taking pictures at a 10-minute interval of course we're projecting them at standard Sound speed this means that we are compressing 72 hours into just 18 seconds yes this is a real rose and these are real whiskers do you see I haven't shaved since you started to watch that rosebud open three days and nights ago gives you something to think about doesn't it this is a 3-foot length of standard 16 millimeter motion picture film on it there are 120 separate pictures this three feet of film could go through the high-speed camera or I shaved while you were looking at the close-up of the film you see we used the time-lapse camera to take the close-up so there was plenty of time this three feet of film to go through the high-speed camera and a thousandth of a second the same length of film in the time-lapse camera could take days months or even years to expose according to the interval that we used between exposures I suppose that we could call a piece of film like this a memory with a variable time reference say would you like to take a nice two-day vacation alright sit back relax and enjoy yourself [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a number of years ago in Germany a man gave to the world a new concept it shook the scientific world from top to bottom changed the course of human history and gave us the Atomic Age the man Albert Einstein the concept relativity that strange fantastic relationship between time distance and mass now an important part of that concept can be expressed in a simple equation e equals MC squared energy equals mass times the speed of light squared the equivalence of mass and energy the basic formula that unlocked the secrets of the atom but equally if not more important is that relationship between time and space so we can't speak of the equivalence of time and space they're not exactly equal but we can't say that they are relative or they are all bound up together just obtuse there you say well maybe so but every day there is new concrete evidence to prove it true when dr. Leo Lawrence and his associates at the University of California designed the 184 inch cyclotron they didn't laugh at this theory they accepted it is true and it's a good thing they did in the cyclotron tiny particles are accelerated in magnetic and electrical fields until they approach the speed of light this rotary condenser at the side of the cyclotron compensates for the increased mass of the particles which occurred exactly as Einstein had predicted it would let's suppose that at some day in the Buck Rogers future you decide to take a trip to a planet satellite of the star Sirius as long as we're supposing let's say that you're powered rocket ship is capable of traveling at ninety nine and ninety nine million 999,999 100 million percent of the speed of light now of course this is very close to 186 thousand two hundred and eighty four miles a second in view of the fact that Sirius is nine light-years from the earth it would take just a little over eighteen years to make the round trip naturally you'd plan to take a large supply of food but all you'd need would be a sack lunch traveling at the speed not only would your watch slowed down by a factor of seventy thousand but your heart respiration digestion appetite all would slow down in the same ratio you could leave the earth some morning right after breakfast by the time you got to Sirius you'd be ready for a sandwich and when you got back to the earth you'd be just hungry enough for a good dinner but then would come the surprise you'd find that while you were only one day older physically your children would all be grown up and through college and all your friends would be eighteen years older than when you left them just 12 hours ago by your watch a concept such as this is almost impossible for the human mind to grasp it's so far beyond our normal experience but maybe this will help first of all listen to my heart now let me start the clock so that you can become accustomed to the rhythm I speak the art stick it looks normal duster but if we can accelerate this room and everything in it to the speed of light 186,000 284 miles a second time would stand still my heart would stop beating and I wouldn't die the thought would cease to run and everything would squeeze into a lie infinitely thin now we can't speed the room up to the speed of light of course but with the magic of some very special photography we can show you exactly what would happen if we could speed up the room to 90% of the speed of light a hundred and sixty seven thousand miles per second are you ready alright there is our speedometer and we're going to travel in that direction you know that's what's happening my voice is choose [Music] [Music] [Music] when the room was accelerated everything seemed normal to me my voice sounded the same the rhythm of the clock remained constant the yardstick seemed the same in both directions that's because I was accelerated along with the room but you as a stationary observer were aware of the changes now of course the visual effects which you noticed were achieved in this case by the use of a Panavision lens a variable aspect ratio lens but the effect was exactly the same as if the room had actually been accelerated to 90 percent of the speed of light these are called relativistic effects they are based on mathematical formulas that are as common in the workaday world of the nuclear physicist as two times two equals four is in our world fantastic as they may seem these are the formulas that gave us this [Music] that's what we're going to consider together in the next few moments maybe the most important thing in all your life so listen carefully first of all keep in mind all the weird fantastic facts we've been discussing and then think for a moment about the nature of God to create and maintain the universe God would have to be omnipotent omniscient and omnipresent that is he'd have to be all-powerful all-knowing and he would have to be present or existent everywhere at once do you realize what this means if time and space are inseparably linked together then a God who is not limited in space cannot be limited by time if to him every point in space is here then every moment of time is now and this is a tremendous personal importance to you and to me for reasons that are not too difficult to understand man likes to feel that the past is gone dead and buried but nothing could be further from the truth even from a human point of view the past continues to exist in the present would you like to see almost a million years into the past and see it as in the present as right now but you can and I take a little trip out into the country away from the city lights if the night is clear and your eyesight is good you will be able to see in the constellation of Andromeda a tiny hazy object it's called the Andromeda nebula it's actually another universe some eight hundred twenty thousand light years out in space while you're looking remember this the light reaching your eye tonight left that distant universe more than three-quarters of a million years ago and it's been traveling like a wailing banshee through space ever since you're looking eight hundred twenty thousand years into the past and seeing it as now but it isn't necessary to go that far out into space to encounter the same principle each day as you look at the Sun you're looking eight and a quarter minutes into the past for the Sun is eight and a quarter light minutes away from the earth at night when you look up at Antares you're seeing 250 years ago just as though it were today from time to time the newspapers report the discovery of a nova or a supernova a star that bursts into flame like a giant hydrogen bomb we see it happen with our telescopes we say that the event has just occurred but any astronomer knows that what we see is now may have happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago but you know that that works both ways if you were on the star Rigel Joan of Arc would just now be rallying the people of France on Bethel Jers John Bunyan would be writing pilgrims progress on the star Canopus the gallant 600 would be charging half a league half a league half a league onward but here's something that's gonna keep you awake nights if you were on the star Sirius you could see what you were doing nine years ago because you're still doing it do you realize what this means it means that everything you have ever done in all your life you're still doing everything you've ever committed every wrong and evil thing you've ever done you're still doing and will continue to do throughout all eternity apart from one thing God's forgiveness what is forgiveness does God just say well I'm sorry about it you're sorry about it so we'll skip it when God forgives a sin he wipes it out of existence only the omnipotent eternal God who controls all the factors of time and space and matter could ever wipe out a sin but that's exactly what he promises to do he says I will remove your transgressions as far from you as the East is from the West that's infinite distance and he says I will blot out as a thick cloud dye transgressions and as a cloud thy sins return unto me for I have redeemed thee in the light of what we have been considering together there's just one absolute necessity in life and I don't mean an automobile either let you say an automobile is a necessity but I don't have a car I can't get to work what do you have to work how do you say if I don't work I can't eat you have to eat how do you say if I don't eat out dying that'll be bad won't it well it will be if you have to stand before a holy righteous God with Unforgiven sin there is just one absolute necessity in life and that's forgiveness but God offers it to every one of us as a gift for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord at this moment as you weigh this decision you're at the crossroads between time and eternity why don't you take the omnipotent God at His Word the one who says but to as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that believe [Music]