Related papers: We have time because we shall never know
This paper investigates the mathematical representation of time in physics. In existing theories time is represented by the real numbers, hence their formal properties represent properties of time: these are surveyed. The central question…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
The paper puts forward a conceptual framework in which the phenomenon of time can be presented and discussed in a proper way. We argue that change is ontologically and epistemologically a more basic phenomenon than time. Time is an abstract…
The feeling of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic perceptions about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. In this short note I argue for a tenseless view…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Advances in our understanding of the physical universe have impacted dramatically on how we view ourselves. Right at the core of all modern thinking about the universe is the assumption that dynamics is an elemental feature that exists…
Contrary to our immediate and vivid sensation of past, present, and future as continually shifting non-relational modalities, time remains as tenseless and relational as space in all of the established theories of fundamental physics. Here…
The problem of time is a deep paradox in our physical description of the world. According to Aristotle's relational theory, time is a measure of change and does not exist on its own. In contrast, quantum mechanics, just like Newtonian…
The nature of time has beguiled philosophers for nearly three millennia. There are myriad types of time including cosmological time, biological time, psychological time, physical time, historical time, and even theological time. My brief…
The notions of time in the theories of Newton and Einstein are reviewed so that certain of their assumptions are clarified. These assumptions will be seen as the causes of the incompatibility between the two different ways of understanding…
Our main purpose here is to study some qualitative aspects of space and time. These include the notion of space and time regarded as the containers of respectively bodies and events, the divisibility of space, and the unrepeatability of…
Time is one of those issues about which many thinkers and scientists have tried to pronounce their finest thoughts, but the discourse about time has remained vague and often inconsistent. In this paper we put forward a conceptual framework…
This paper examines the various arguments that have been put forward suggesting either that time does not exist, or that it exists but its flow is not real. I argue that (i) time both exists and flows; (ii) an Evolving Block Universe…
Because closed timelike curves are consistent with general relativity, many have asserted that time travel into the past is physically possible if not technologically infeasible. However, the possibility of time travel into the past rests…
We argue that (1) our perception of time through change and (2) the gap between reality and our observation of it are at the heart of both quantum mechanics and the dynamical mechanism of physical systems. We suggest that the origin of…
This is a comment on both Gruber et al (2022) and Bunamano and Rovelli (2022), which discuss the relation between physical time and human time. I claim here, contrary to many views discussed there, that there is no foundational conflict…
From the Physics point of view, time is now best described through General Relativity, as part of space-time which is a dynamical object encoding gravity. Time possesses also some intrinsic irreversibility due to thermodynamics, quantum…
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute…
Confusion and disagreement around the notion of time is due to the fact that we often fail to recognize that we call 'time' a variety of distinct notions, only partially related to one another. Many apparently obvious properties of time are…