In our book Signs of Life: The Origin of Astrological Symbolism and Its Relation to the Human Psyche, Polly Dukes and I describe how the seasons have played a major role in the way humans have, down the ages, collectively made representations of (psychologically ‘projected’) their fundamental attitudes and modes of behaviour.
Time Cycles
The seasons are, of course, one way of marking time. On Earth, time is largely a function of the sequences and cycles that are formed by our planet’s orbital characteristics. These cycles are of: day and night (as the Earth revolves on its polar axis with respect to the sun), the phases or apparent shapes of the sunlit portion of the Moon which repeat every month, and the seasons as they change and recur with every year. These rhythmic and recurring changes have shaped humans’ conception—even the larger part of their very consciousness—of the very notion of time.
Night and day, the months and the seasons are thus the main factors that evoke the concept of time on Earth, but—as we allude to in the book—what might the indicators of time be on ‘exoplanets’ (that is, planets orbiting around stars other than our sun)? On these alien worlds, the cycles and rhythms that give rise to the apprehension of time may well be (and most probably often are) very different—or even possibly completely absent altogether. What is ‘time’ when these points of periodic temporal reference aren’t there?
How Many Exoplanets?
At this point you may think such speculations to be somewhat far-fetched. You might ask, how many of these ‘exoplanets’ are there, anyway? It turns out that their probable number is so large as to be absolutely mind-boggling. It appears that there are probably in the region of 11 billion exoplanets in our galaxy (the ‘Milky Way’) alone. It has been further estimated that in the observable universe there are probably around 2 trillion galaxies. This would suggest that there are in the order of around 2.2 × 10^22 exoplanets in the observable universe. Other estimates put the number at around 3.2 x 10^23. But this is just the observable universe—that part that we can see with instruments. There’s much more to the universe that we can’t see. If we consider estimates of the probable size of the entire universe as we understand it to be, there could be as many as 4.84 * 10^30 exoplanets.
That’s about one billion exoplanets for every grain of sand on Earth.
A Zillion Orbital Possibilities
Given these truly staggering numbers, we can say that we have some freedom to posit the existence of virtually any physically possible exoplanetary orbital characteristic, which would include some that would cause them to be, from the subjective point of view of a potential inhabitant (at least in comparison with our notions) without time.
The notion of an exoplanet whose polar axial rotation (and thus its equatorial plane) is not obliquely angled to the plane of its orbit around its parent star (as ours is) becomes positively unremarkable. On such an exoplanet there would be no seasons. No spring, summer, autumn or winter. In fact, no meteorological changes throughout its year (i.e., throughout its orbit around its parent star). For a potential inhabitant, this would entail a conception of time quite different to ours, at least with regard to the way we think of time in terms of the constantly changing yet ever-repeating seasons.
One may also imagine a planet which, in addition to having no angular difference between the plane of its equator and the plane of its ecliptic, is also ‘tidally locked’ in its orbit, so that one side always faces its parent star and one side always faces away (as the sides of the Moon do with the Earth). Such a planet would, in addition to having no recurring seasons, neither have any recurring day or night. For a person living on that planet, what would be their conception of time? Indeed, would they have a conception of time?
For such a person, there would be no ‘today’, no ‘yesterday’ and no ‘tomorrow’. These conceptions of time are for us wholly due to the rotation of the Earth about its axis, causing virtually everyone on Earth to experience days and nights. But on our exoplanet, this would not be the case. There would neither be any repeating seasons to give any sense of time.
The apparent movement of visible stars, planets or Moon-like satellites in its parent star’s system might give our exoplanet’s inhabitants some notion of cyclic time, but the invisibility of any such celestial bodies on the side permanently facing the parent star would mean a perennially “daytime” world with no ‘time cycles’ whatsoever.
No Time to Speak Of
This thought experiment makes us aware of the fact that our notion of time is inexorably bound to our hyper-familiarity with the cycles of light and dark, of seasonal change, and of the apparent movement and periodicity of bodies in the sky. Without these factors, without day or night, or seasons, or the rhythms of other celestial bodies, there would be no way to reckon time. Effectively, there would be no time.
Humans and other living creatures have of course adapted to the day-night cycle. One thing many have done is to fall into unconsciousness in the dark period, and to dream. Surely these phenomena have had survival value. Sleeping conserves physical energy and enables a time for repair, and for complex creatures like ourselves, sleeping and dreaming probably have cognitive and emotional functions, consolidating memories and preparing us unconsciously for the lives we have to lead whilst we’re awake.
But what of the inhabitants of the Timeless Planet of Eternal Sunlight? They would not have been forced to find physiological and psychological uses for any dark period, because no such periods exist. Of course, they might still fall unconscious and even dream, in portions of their eternal daytime, though this seems unlikely, since there would be no environmental cues to prompt such behaviours, as there are with us.
They would, of course, one presumes, see each other gradually age, but how would they reckon the progression of that process? There would be no temporal units of periodicity to guide them. What would life be like for them without time? In the Timeless Planet of Eternal Sunlight, there would be no time and thus no time-based myths nor indeed any appropriated cognitive-cultural awareness of such a thing.
A Timeless Existence
Imagine: you live on a large landmass on the sunlit hemisphere of an exoplanet. Its star (its “sun”) is shining down—permanently. No periods of day and night go by. No celestial bodies are seen in apparent movement in the sky. No seasonal changes happen. Would time, for all practical purposes, exist for you?
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