What is time? Physicist Carlo Rovelli ponders the enigmatic fourth dimension
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/wha...ncna895226
EXCERPT: . . . What exactly is time?
It is something very complex. We mistakenly think that time is something basic, something very elementary. We imagine it ticking away the life of the cosmos, in a succession of instants. This understanding of time is wrong. Or at least, it’s an approximation of a far more complex reality.
This doesn’t mean that the layperson’s understanding of time is an illusion. It only means that it holds up in a limited way. It’s like thinking that the Earth is flat. As long as we move in a small region [on the Earth’s surface], we can very well consider it to be flat. When we build a house, for example, we don’t need to bother with the curvature of the surface of the Earth. But if we look at a larger scale, then definitely the Earth is not flat.
It’s the same with time. Our everyday intuition of it works very well, but only as long as we don’t look too far out into space or too deeply into small distances, and only if we don’t consider things moving at high speeds.
What does physics have to say about the “flow” of time that humans seem to feel?
It may not be a physics problem. I think it depends on our brains and the complicated way in which we form memories. It has to do with how we remember the past and anticipate the future. So to explain this passage of time, this flowing of time, I believe one should look at neuroscience, not physics.
What do physicists see as the biggest unanswered question about time?
The biggest of the open questions is: Why is the future so different from the past? This is something that is not written into the laws of physics — the fundamental laws of physics don’t distinguish the past from the future. This is still something mysterious, I believe.
MORE: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/wha...ncna895226
David Bohm, Quantum Mechanics and Enlightenment
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...ghtenment/
INTRO: Some scientists seek to clarify reality, others to mystify it. David Bohm seemed driven by both impulses. He is renowned for promoting a sensible (according to Einstein and other experts) interpretation of quantum mechanics. But Bohm also asserted that science can never fully explain the world, and his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order delved into spirituality. Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has attracted increasing attention lately. He is a hero of Adam Becker’s new book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics. In The End of Science I tried to make sense of this paradoxical truth-seeker, who died in 1992 at the age of 74. Below is an edited version of that profile. See also my recent post on another quantum visionary, John Wheeler. –John Horgan
MORE: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...ghtenment/
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/wha...ncna895226
EXCERPT: . . . What exactly is time?
It is something very complex. We mistakenly think that time is something basic, something very elementary. We imagine it ticking away the life of the cosmos, in a succession of instants. This understanding of time is wrong. Or at least, it’s an approximation of a far more complex reality.
This doesn’t mean that the layperson’s understanding of time is an illusion. It only means that it holds up in a limited way. It’s like thinking that the Earth is flat. As long as we move in a small region [on the Earth’s surface], we can very well consider it to be flat. When we build a house, for example, we don’t need to bother with the curvature of the surface of the Earth. But if we look at a larger scale, then definitely the Earth is not flat.
It’s the same with time. Our everyday intuition of it works very well, but only as long as we don’t look too far out into space or too deeply into small distances, and only if we don’t consider things moving at high speeds.
What does physics have to say about the “flow” of time that humans seem to feel?
It may not be a physics problem. I think it depends on our brains and the complicated way in which we form memories. It has to do with how we remember the past and anticipate the future. So to explain this passage of time, this flowing of time, I believe one should look at neuroscience, not physics.
What do physicists see as the biggest unanswered question about time?
The biggest of the open questions is: Why is the future so different from the past? This is something that is not written into the laws of physics — the fundamental laws of physics don’t distinguish the past from the future. This is still something mysterious, I believe.
MORE: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/wha...ncna895226
David Bohm, Quantum Mechanics and Enlightenment
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...ghtenment/
INTRO: Some scientists seek to clarify reality, others to mystify it. David Bohm seemed driven by both impulses. He is renowned for promoting a sensible (according to Einstein and other experts) interpretation of quantum mechanics. But Bohm also asserted that science can never fully explain the world, and his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order delved into spirituality. Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has attracted increasing attention lately. He is a hero of Adam Becker’s new book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics. In The End of Science I tried to make sense of this paradoxical truth-seeker, who died in 1992 at the age of 74. Below is an edited version of that profile. See also my recent post on another quantum visionary, John Wheeler. –John Horgan
MORE: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...ghtenment/