2021-01-16 New Scientist

54 | New Scientist | 16 January 2021

Now is the time

Buddhists recommend living

in the present moment.

How long is this gap between

the past and the future?

Talia Morris

Cape Tribulation,

Queensland, Australia

As someone who has practised

Buddhist-inspired meditation

for three years, I can answer the

question of how long the gap

is between past and future

with some confidence.

In a very real sense, neither

the past nor the future exists –

the past is composed of memories,

and the future of hopes, fears

and expectations. Only the now

is real, there is no gap between

past and future.

As viewed by the person

meditating, “now” is both

infinitesimally small and

infinitely large because it is

possible to use techniques

like following a simple bodily

sensation, such as breathing, to –

at least temporarily – disregard

mental intrusions. Ignoring

memories, worries and random

thoughts lets someone focus

on simply being present for as

long (or as little) as they desire.

If done successfully, meditation

can have the interesting effect

of telescoping time so that

10 or 15 minutes can feel like

a few seconds.

Will Kemp

Wagait Beach,

Northern Territory, Australia

While I understand the

psychological benefits of being

“in the moment”, I think the

present is grossly overrated. No

sooner has it come than it is gone.

The most important part of the

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The back pages Almost the last word

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present is what you will remember

later, possibly in decades to come.

The past is important because you

can enjoy the memories you have

of it, and the future is important

because without it, what you do

in the present is irrelevant.

The present doesn’t really

exist, except in future memories.

Pete Lloyd

Torremolinos, Spain

I once worked in an office with

air conditioning that cycled on

and off. When the fan stopped,

I would become aware of the noise

it had been making – which, up to

that point, I had been ignoring.

The change in sound made

me aware of what I had been

hearing for about the last second

or so. As far as my hearing is

concerned, my present is

about 1.5 seconds long.

Hillary Shaw

Newport, Shropshire, UK

For a non-physicist Buddhist,

the gap between past and future

might be around 150 milliseconds,

reckoned to be the speed of

human thought.

For a quantum Buddhist,

however, this gap may be much

smaller. The shortest measurable

distance in the universe is the

Planck length: about 1.6 × 10-35

metres. Light will traverse

this length in around

5.4 × 10-44 seconds, making that

the shortest time measurable.

However, there may be even

shorter lengths. A black hole

Buddhist must allow for the

possibility of the singularity at

the heart of a black hole being

infinitely small. At this point,

conceptions of time and space

break down, making the past-

future gap precisely 0 seconds.

In this case, there is no present.

Tim Lewis

Narberth, Pembrokeshire, UK

It can take up to a second for

the human brain to process

information about the immediate

environment, so all that we

experience is already in the past.

Neither for Buddhists nor for

anyone else can there be such a

thing as being “in the present”.

Chris Arnold

Darlington, Western Australia

Consider time as running

along a timeline arrow where

there is no gap, only a future

and a past separated by an

infinitesimally narrow boundary.

The future flows into the past

across this boundary.

In this model, the present is an

interval that we, for convenience,

overlay on the timeline.

Chris Daniel

Glan Conwy, Conwy, UK

It depends. The faster you are

moving, the more time slows

down, and if you are on the event

horizon of a black hole, time stops.

In The Order of Time, Carlo

Rovelli describes time as a light

cone converging from the past

to a point representing perhaps

nanoseconds of the present,

then diverging again into an

ever-widening cone of the future.

It can take milliseconds for

sensations such as touch, sound

or light to register with our brains,

but 2 or 3 seconds are required for

the brain to make sense of these

inputs in order to experience

the moment of^ “now”.

The present is therefore a

psychological illusion based

on events of the past and

predictions about the future.

This week’s new questions

Escape from the sun How far would you have to travel

away from the sun for it to no longer be the brightest

object you could see? Jim Loft, Swansea, UK

Bird banter Many birds are able to remember and mimic

sequences of sounds they hear, including human speech.

What evolutionary advantage does this skill give them?

Mick Groves, Oxhill, Warwickshire, UK

What are the advantages

of being able to mimic

sequences of sounds?

“ The present moment

is a psychological

illusion based on

events of the past

and predictions

about the future”