What Happens Inside Clocks?
Let’s take a moment to see what a clock’s mechanism does. Even the sundial, one of the earliest clocks, uses a system. The Sun’s movement across the sky is the sundial’s mechanism.
Pendulum clocks use a swinging weight to drive gears that move the clock’s hands. Quartz clocks use a battery to vibrate a crystal, while a mechanism counts the vibrations into seconds and displays them as time. Atomic clocks use an oscillating atom, and a mechanism counts and displays it as time.
What do these tools have in common? They all rely on repeating physical events. Not one of them measures “time” directly. They measure the Earth’s rotation, mechanical motion, crystal vibration, or atomic transitions.
Modern physics points to phenomena such as GPS clocks and muon decay as evidence that time itself can run at different rates. Before accepting that conclusion, we should first ask a simple question: What exactly is happening inside clocks?
A clock translates the repeating motion inside its mechanism into time. However, if clocks are in a radically different environment, their mechanism could be affected. And if time is non-physical, then it’s difficult to see how physical forces such as gravity or motion could alter time itself.
Additionally, time is deeply entwined in our language. People like to feel an emotional connection to time. The word “time” seems to define every activity we experience, and by adding adjectives and feelings, we continue to think of time as the cause of all physical activity. For example, “we had a fabulous day at the park; it was the best time ever.” But how did time cause your awesome day?
Moreover, clocks show us the time of day by counting seconds. But consider this: clocks measure a physical process, and if the process changes, does it affect time itself, or merely the clock’s mechanism?