Where is Tomorrow?

What do we, here on earth, see when the star light is extinguished? We still see the star, at least for years afterwards.

Our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is four light years away, this being the time it takes for the starshine light to travel across space and arrive within our range of sight. We look up and see, not Proxima Centauri, but the light emitted by the star four years previously. We see, not Proxima Centauri as it is today, but as it was four years ago. If it were to burn out tomorrow, we would still see it, burning brightly, for another four years.

Four light years away is twenty-three million million miles. Most of the stars we can see as we casually glance up at the skies are, or at least were, within a few hundred light-years distance. Our night sky is therefore a snapshot of a variety of different star states, all past. One star, as you see it, is actually as it was four years ago, while another is a glimpse of starlife a hundred years ago, and yet another the starshine of a light long extinguished, all depending on how far away they are. Should we say, as we look skyward, that this starscape is now, the present, as far as our earthly perception is concerned? Or should we say it is a mosaic of past years, past events, brought into our present time? Where does the past end and the present begin? Is the future similarly entwined within our perception of the present? Which time is it now? How does science see time and how can its insights be used to develop an understanding of precognition?

The sun is eight light minutes away, so even as we watch the setting sun we are deceived by eight minutes. We experience sunlight in delay. We are warmed by the sun that was, not by the sun that is. But just as much as the presence of the setting sun is an illusion (doubly so, for it does not 'set' at all!), so is the precision of eight minutes. Being earthbound, grounded, we all agree eight minutes is eight minutes. We set our watches by the pips when we phone for the time, and by such agreement we meet at the right places at the right times. Sir Isaac Newton described time as absolute, passing in same-sized chunks, minute following minute, hour following hour, laid out in a long chain of flowing linear time. Sir Isaac, though, didn't have the benefit of observing time from above, where the view changes dramatically.

In 1971 two scientists (Hafele and Keating) borrowed four precision atomic clocks from the US Naval Observatory and took them aboard commercial aeroplanes travelling east from the United States around the world and back to America again. They repeated the trip flying westward. Each time they landed they compared the time according to the clocks which had circumnavigated the world with the time on the same kind of clocks which had been kept firmly grounded. They discovered that, basically, the clocks were an average of fifty-nine nanoseconds (billionths of a second) slower than the grounded clocks on their return to America. Time, according to the clocks, had been stretched, albeit only by a few billionths of a second, by travel. The clocks had measured the timewarp experienced by the planes and their passengers. Eight minutes on the ground is not the same as eight minutes spent whizzing around the earth. Time does not come in linear, premeasured chunks. It can be stretched and warped, so that different people, in different situations, may experience time differently (if minutely) relative to each other.

If you went up into space and travelled in a rocket for a few years, everything would appear normal in a time sense. You would age normally, in keeping with your perception of time. It would only be on your return that you would discover the timewarp, because your earth-bound friends would have aged more than you. They would have experienced more years than you did because their time was fast relative to yours, and your time was slow relative to theirs. You would be able to agree that you shared the same moment of take-off and the same moment of landing, but there would be no agreed now moment between those two times.

Timewarps have a real and observable effect in many high technology applications. Satellite navigation systems, for example, are affected by relativity. At a subatomic level, some devastatingly exciting examples of timewarp reveal the reality of the relativity of time. Space radiation bombards the earth in the form of cosmic rays which travel at such high speed that their timewarp, relative to earth time, is one hundred billion. If it were possible for you to climb aboard that cosmic ray, three thousand earth years would pass in what would seem to you to be just one second.

Real life and laboratory observations have measured the reality of timewarps and relativity to the point at which Newton's concept of absolute time is no longer accepted by science. It was Einstein who, at the beginning of this century, realised that time is relative rather than absolute. It is warped by motion and by gravity because time is physically linked to space. Time is not a separate thing from space. Instead there is 'space-time'.

Imagine space-time like a huge three dimensional patchwork blanket spread throughout the universe. (Space-time is really a four dimensional concept, since space already exists in three dimensions, so the addition of an extra dimension – time - makes four dimensions in total. However, since the four dimensions are difficult to envisage, a 3-D imaginary blanket will suffice to get the picture!) The patchwork squares may stretch and curve when pulled by the gravity of a nearby planet, or elongate under the tension of localised motion. The lines forming the edges of the squares (curved or otherwise) are chunks of time, some long, some short, each sharing corners with intersecting lines (points of agreed now moments), but each experiencing different time values relative to each other. Apart from the intersecting corners, there is no common agreement on now, just as there can be no agreement between the rocket traveller and her ground based friend on any shared now moments other than the beginning and end of the rocket's journey.

On this space-time patchwork blanket, where is the present moment, if no now points of time can be agreed? Take one now point. Do all the other now points fall into either past, future, or (maybe) present moments relative to this chosen now point? If so, the future already exists, just as much as the past does. No longer does it become a matter of when is tomorrow but a weird mixture of where and when.

This is the timescape view of time understood by many modern physicists to be the best model for the reality of time. Just as we can stand back and view a landscape, they argue, so we can perceive a timescape, where past, present and future all exist together. This model, also known as block time, not only suits their theories, but also suits their scientific observations.

Our personal experience as human star-gazers tells us that our perception of now is not necessarily accurate. That star we see is not now as far as the dead star is concerned, and the sun slipped over the horizon, (or the earth flipped backwards - it's all relative!) some eight minutes before we perceived it to do so. Even the horizon itself is merely a perception. There is no actual horizon, although the illusion of its existence led generations of people to perceive a flat earth. Indeed our human experience is entirely illusory. The very images received by our brains are upside down because our eyes are like cameras. Light rays from an image, perhaps a tree for example, are focussed by the eye's lens onto the retina at the back of the eye. The eye lens is convex, like a camera lens, and the retina is like the film in the back of the camera. The tree image is turned upside down by the lens, appearing inverted on both retina and camera film alike. The 'upside down tree' message arrives at our brain via the optic nerve. Since the brain learned in very early infancy that the upside down images did not relate to what the baby hears and touches, it turns all visual images up the right way again. So we see the tree the right way up. Life works better for us that way, but it is, nevertheless, a life built on a perceptual adjustment: an illusion. How much of our life do we re-interpret to make it fit in with what we 'know' to be 'true'? Perhaps we can never be sure, even with our scientific observations.

In 1905 when Einstein first put forward his theory of time and relativity he also advanced some new ideas on atomic theory. In the history of science, Einstein is regarded as the father of modern physics because he initiated these two branches: relativity and quantum physics (atomic theory). These two fields represent the points of departure from the old classical mechanistic physics as developed by Galileo, Newton and others, which had been accepted as fact for the preceding three hundred years.

Even though Einstein opened up the world of quantum physics, he remained unsold on some of the ideas and theories it later generated. In many ways Einstein became 'stuck' on the relativity-inspired view of a world where all time is set out as a timescape and where time does not flow, yet he also found it difficult to assimilate this into his picture of everyday reality. I find it interesting, from a metaphorical point of view, that in his last seven years of life Einstein suffered an aneurism of the aorta which caused him severe abdominal pain. In other words, his aorta was swollen and dilated, interfering with the normal blood circulation or 'flow' and threatening rupture or clotting. Finally the aorta did rupture and Einstein died from the haemorrhage which resulted. I wonder how much Einstein grappled with assimilating, in those last years, the paradox presented by his work on relativity with its 'no flow, block time' and the quite different picture of an indeterminate, all responding world painted by quantum physics. Could he really not 'stomach' the idea of a non-determined, flowing time, world? This is, indeed, his recorded view. Or did he, as he lay on his death bed, finally succumb, in keeping with the metaphor of his rupture, to the pressure of evidence supporting the 'flow' he so resisted?

Yes. That's right. While science prefers a model of fixed block time, with past, present and future all laid out, it has also discovered a world of constant indeterminate change. Welcome to the world of scientific paradox.

Quantum physics is the study of the physical world at the atomic and subatomic level. Its hallmark is arguably a mathematical equation known as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, established in 1927, which basically describes subatomic particles as difficult to pin down, measure and predict. Take electrons, for example. Electrons whiz around the general arena of their atom environments, absorbing and releasing energy as they go. Science likes to measure, observe and categorise, but electrons have uncertain lifestyles which are difficult, if not impossible, to examine precisely. According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, you can measure either an electron's speed or its position, but not both, and this uncertainty applies to many facets of electron behaviour. The classical laws of physics, with their emphasis on prediction based on precise measurement, no longer apply at the subatomic level.

In fact, scientists cannot even be certain about the very existence of a specific particle from one moment to the next. Instead they describe a particle as having a 'tendency to exist' or a 'tendency to behave' in one way rather than another. Probability replaces certainty. Since the entire universe, as we understand it, is composed of atomic particles and space, the notion of the fixed, determined timescape painted by relativity is undermined by a universal basis of uncertainty.

Uncertainty even pervades the concept of a dotlike particle. When a particle is tending not to be dotlike it acts more like a wave: not a particle tracing out a wave shape, but a total wave form. This duality of matter and energy is known as the Principle of Complementarity and the 'chosen' form, from one moment to the next, seems to be more a product of probability than of cause and effect.

One of the most interesting observations to emerge from quantum physics, in my opinion, is that if you split a photon particle (light in particle form) through a crystal and watch the paths taken by each half of the original photon, they may take off in opposite directions, but they move in related ways. If one spins, so does the other. If one changes direction, or has its direction changed by manipulation, its partner's direction is seen to match. These changes are simultaneous. It is as if the partners are in instantaneous communication, having precise knowledge of the whereabouts and behaviour of each other. Newton would be at an absolute loss to explain a world functioning beyond the laws of cause and effect.

The world of matter and energy seen at the subatomic level is an interconnected, indeterminate one, which may operate, at least occasionally, on simultaneity and 'knowingness' rather than on cause and effect. Perhaps it is a world best viewed as one whole system, comprised of a web of intercommunicating, interchanging matter and energy. The old ideal of classical science that scientists should stand back and observe the results of their experiments objectively is lost at the quantum level because the scientist observer is also a part of the whole system she is watching. Not only does she interpret her observations according to her human perceptions, but she is also a part of the subject. Her view, her perceptions, her actions in measuring or observing are part of the whole outcome. Total objectivity, that old cornerstone of classical science, is not possible.

What have we learned in this chapter about the when or where of tomorrow according to science?

Since time is relative there is no such thing as an agreed now. There is my now and your now, but we are not necessarily sharing the same now.

Science strongly supports the relativity timescape model where the past and future already exist 'over there' somewhere.

The laws of cause and effect do not describe all events at a subatomic level.

Some subatomic events occur simultaneously with similar subatomic events, without apparent cause.

Subatomic particles exist and behave with uncertainty, often apparently without cause.

Quantum physics supports uncertainty and indeterminacy as the underlying basis of the universe.

Quantum physics supports an interconnected holistic system view of the universe, impossible to measure scientifically with total objectivity.

Quantum physics reveals a world of duality, where matter and energy are complementary forms of the same phenomenon.

As human beings we perceive our world according to our beliefs; each to his own illusion.

In short, science presents us with proven paradoxes about the nature of time. The future already exists and yet it is uncertain and indeterminate. Now or at least our individual experience of now, is a fairly safe bet, but then the human experience itself is illusionary because it is based on perception. Paradox itself is acceptable to science because science has observed the duality of matter and energy, and yet science is unable to observe and measure with total objectivity.

In summary perhaps three main points emerge in considering what science can offer towards an understanding of precognition.

Firstly, an already existing future is a valid scientific model according to which 'tomorrow' is out there 'somewhere', in some kind of 'now'. Secondly, not all events are the result of cause and effect. Thirdly, it is acceptable to live with paradox.

How exactly these points contribute to my understanding of how precognition occurs will become clear as the following chapters unfold.

When I sat down to write this chapter I decided then and there to open with the idea of the seeing a star long after it had collapsed and extinguished. I wrote the first paragraph, then sat back to contemplate developing the idea of a night sky as a mirror of a multitude of times past, depending on the individual distances of all the stars. Midcontemplation my mail arrived. One letter was from Rebekah confirming that my chosen extracts of her precognitive experiences were to her satisfaction and giving me formal permission to publish them as they appear earlier in this book. In a short covering letter she told me about a book she was enjoying and quoted just one line: 'A star is as near as it is far'.

Rebekah would have had no conscious knowledge that I intended to write about the distances of stars and I had no conscious knowledge that her letter was already winging its way towards me. Who had the precognition? Rebekah, me or neither of us? The quote arrived at the moment of my contemplation and was an event apparently beyond the influence of cause and effect. Above all, the saying itself presents a paradox in the same fashion as the koan riddles of Zen Buddhism. These were offered to disciples to illustrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and lead them towards enlightenment through more holistic, intuitive insight. One of the best known koans is, of course, 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?'. Another is 'We are facing each other all day long, yet we have never met'.

Through its acceptance of paradox, science is one step away from the mystical approach of synthesising, through contemplation of a specific paradox or koan, an enlightened, whole understanding of the universe, unreachable through reasoning alone. The findings of science as stated in this chapter, despite paradox, are all-encompassing of the ultimate truth. 'A star is as near as it is far'.