Whenever one comes across profound reflections on the “mysterious and incomprehensible” nature of time, one always wants to object: but there is... no mysticism here, gentlemen! The universal measure of space and time in the Universe is the speed of light. In a vacuum it is constant and equals 300,000 kilometers per second. That is, a second is simply the time during which light manages to cover 300 thousand kilometers. The photons have flown 300,000 km, which means a second has passed.
Accordingly, a minute is a span of time during which photons cover a distance 60 times greater, 18,000,000 km. To express an hour in kilometers, multiply by sixty once again. Want to know what a year is? Please! An astronomical year is the time during which light travels about 9.5 trillion kilometers. Half a year, therefore, is 9.5 trillion km divided by two. A month is one twelfth of the same figure, and so on. 14 billion years, the postulated age of the universe, is approximately ten to the twenty-third power kilometers, which also means the size (radius) of the visible Universe.
To generalize: time is the distance that light covers during that time. In other words, any time can be expressed in kilometers. An important consequence follows: if a quantity is expressed in units of length, then it is a vector and can assume both positive and negative values. Incomprehensibly, people still argue about the existence of negative time. How did it happen that negative time was “overlooked”? The thing is that an observer, wherever he may be, sees only the light caught by the receptors of his organ of vision, the light that comes into contact with them. Receding photons are not registered by the observer, except in those cases when, and if, on the way they catch up with some object and reflect from it, in order to return to the observer once more, albeit with a delay. Auxiliary optics do not change the principle; that is, the emitting or reflecting (secondary) source is registered, but always only the light that has reached the observer. Since any flash occurs earlier than it is seen, the motion of photons toward the observer is directed from the past into the future. And motion from the past into the future is precisely the normal, positive flow of time. Conversely, the motion of photons in the opposite direction, away from the observer, proceeds backward in time, from the future into the past. This is the negative course of time, when each subsequent point lies deeper in the past than the previous one. The movement of photons (and other objects) in any direction from the point where the observer himself is located is always directed away from him. From any other point in the universe (the so-called “events”), direction is possible either toward the observer, into the future (the direct light cone), or away from him, into the past (the reverse light cone). The motion of photons backward, away from the observer, wherever it may begin, necessarily provides a negative increment of time, while the magnitude of this increment depends on the speed of objects moving within the photon streams that are potentially capable of reflecting those photons and once again “redirecting” them to the observer.
If an object possesses a subluminal velocity, sooner or later it will be overtaken by a light wave and turned into a source of reflected light, that is, it will be detected in positive time. Thus ordinary celestial bodies, initially located in the reverse light cone of some flash, will later inevitably be registered by the observer, albeit with a certain delay. Whether an astronaut notes the slowing of time, whether the cosmic traveler grows younger in the “twin paradox” while moving away from Earth, they too always remain in the positive time familiar to us, despite a certain negative increment. Positive time is our world, our reality, our dimension, because all objects of the material world (substantial, with positive mass), including the observer, move at subluminal velocities. The upper, unattainable limit for them is the speed of light. Photons possess such a speed, the visible part of electromagnetic radiation, and in general all “massless,” energy-bearing particles. When a particle develops the speed of light, the negative increment of its time exactly corresponds in magnitude to the positive time that has elapsed since the beginning of motion. If a microscopic astronaut were placed inside a photon, he would have to turn his clock hands backward along the way, making sure that the hands constantly remained in their initial position. The resultant for such an object is “time zero.” The particle both starts and reaches its goal simultaneously, in one and the same instant of “stopped” time. It as though “catches up with itself,” “doubles itself” (recall the “double-slit” experiment). An object possessing the speed of light gains the ability to be in several places at once, that is, it acquires the properties of a wave. A wave differs from a particle precisely in that it is observed not in one definite place at a definite moment, but in many places synchronously. Incidentally, the ability of photons to be in positive and negative time simultaneously underlies their capacity to serve as “antiparticles to themselves.” And finally, if an object exceeds the speed of light, then the negative increment of time will be so great that its time will be utterly perverted, will become truly negative, will acquire a minus sign with the accompanying inversion of cause-and-effect relations: it will “reach its destination at seven in the morning yesterday.”
Since formations possessing superluminal velocity traverse any segment of space faster than photons do, they always outpace the corresponding light wave, even when moving toward the observer. In such a case the unavoidable excess of the path they have traversed, in comparison with the rays, will already be directed away from the observer, which means, once again, negative time. Thus objects exceeding the speed of light exist in negative time constantly, regardless of the direction of their motion. They are not overtaken by light, are incapable of reflecting it, and cannot become “secondary” sources of light. Therefore negative time is a world invisible to the subluminal observer, another dimension, another reality. What, then, are the essences that inhabit this reality? Quantum mechanics tells us that antiparticles live in negative time. Their characteristic spin indicates precisely their being in the reverse light cone, which is not shared with the observer. It is logical to suppose that on cosmic scales there also exist formations of antimatter that possess superluminal velocity and for that reason remain in negative time, invisible to us. Indirect signs of their existence, apparently, are what compel scientists to speak of the notorious “black holes,” which absorb (more accurately, do not reflect!) even light, or of some mysterious “dark matter.” The existence of such phenomena is only a hypothesis, like the “tachyon,” a hypothetical micro-object of negative time. But if superluminal cosmic invisibles are possible, then why assign something purely speculative to that role? After all, quite real antimatter has “disappeared,” been “lost,” and in fact there ought to be no less of it in the universe than ordinary mass, since, in accordance with the law of conservation, pairs of antipodal particles appeared precisely as pairs.
They also could have disappeared only in pairs. And if ordinary particles continue to exist to this day in material objects, the same should be expected of their analogous antipodes. Formations made of antiparticles are “non-material” structures, antimatter, the anti-matter invisible to us. Incidentally, it is quite possible that there is even more of such a virtual, imaginary substance in space than of material objects, since for mutual annihilation with a positive unit what is required is not merely an imaginary unit, but its square, capable at a certain moment of providing the “minus one” of mass required for annihilation. It seems that “tachyons,” “black holes,” and other “mysterious invisibles” are simply states of objects made of antimatter, corresponding to their being in the natural environment of their existence, in negative time. As is known, the transfer of antimatter into our time for the purpose of “observing and measuring” is carried out by... cooling superluminal formations almost to absolute zero (one of the ways of slowing particles). Is it worth being surprised that the parameters of the object turn out to differ from the expected ones? The fact that we cannot directly observe, but can only comprehend an imaginary, “tachyonic” mass is entirely in the order of things, for the mass of “fast” particles depends on their speed. The experiment, as it should, affects its own result. And the quantity of changes may, perhaps, turn into quality: a particle may become a wave, even an antiparticle, and vice versa, depending on the speed of motion. One single fundamental essence in its different “hypostases.” The conclusion suggests itself that all discrepancies in the interpretation of classical theories and quantum mechanics arise simply because it is difficult for the researcher to interpret macro-processes in strict accordance with those of quantum objects, since on the cosmic scale he himself is inside, not outside, the system, and besides is incapable of acting upon macro-world objects. Taking the above considerations into account could help in resolving many long-ripened contradictions and problems of physics, in particular in understanding the nature of the Big Bang, which, it seems, is nothing other than yet another annihilation of all the matter present in the universe with all its antimatter. This annihilative explosion is fully capable of supplying that colossal energy from which the formation of antipodal worlds begins anew in the endless cycle of the transformation of matter into radiation and back again.
Exactly so, by analogy with the only eternal system reliably known to modern official science, the pair “particle antiparticle” in a vacuum, the physical world that obeys the law of conservation is, by the logic of things, arranged as a unique and all-encompassing Cosmic Perpetual Motion Machine.
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