Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you questioned yourself about how time came to be? Who says it's 10 in the morning and not 10 at night? Time flies very fast, but theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says that time as we know it doesn't really exist at all. Creepy, isn't it?
Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli claims that time does not exist because there is no time variable in the fundamental equation that describes the world. It probably sounds complicated, as humans have learned to define time socially, but the scientist writes that we don't need to explore the mechanics of the universe to understand the world, but sometimes it's good to 'take a step back' and look at things with another point of view.
It's time a fascinating subject because it touches our deepest emotions. Time begins our life and with it everything conclude. Questioning time is questioning our lives. Rovelli's book, The Order of Time speak right about human experiences that are related to time, and thus defends a convincing argument that they are chronology and continuity just a story we tell ourselves to make our existence meaningful.
Time as an illusion
Rovelli claims it is time is merely a perspective and not a universal truth. In reality, it should be a point of view, which humans pass on from generation to generation as a result of our evolution and our stay on Earth and space in space. From a human perspective, time flies linear, but on at the quantum level, durations are so short that they cannot be divided as we divide them, and there is no time as such at all.
Rovelli explains that it is a universe composed of innumerable events. Even what seems to us to be a thing - a stone, for example - is an event that we humans cannot register. Stone is in a constant state of transformation, it is ephemeral and destined to change its forms. But in this one there is no place or time for the 'grammar of the world'.
Rovelli claims that the way our planet travels creates a sense of order for us, but it doesn't necessarily have to be like that everywhere, even in space. Just like certain ones plants grow in swamps, not deserts, so time is a product of the environment we live in and is unrelated to the universe.
The world is organized and recorded since the past to the present, and humans connect cause and effect because of our perspective. In it, we create events that are linear, which means we relate events to outcomes, which gives us a sense of time. Our limitations create a false or incomplete sense of order that does not tell the whole story. Rovelli thus claims that in fact we blur the world to focus on it and blind ourselves to see. Because of this, Rovelli writes that it is time ignorance.
That time is a human concept/experience, Rovelli demonstrates with the example of an international call abroad - imagine you are talking to a friend from New York and you are in London. When you finally hear what the person is saying in the headset, thousands of seconds have passed and 'now' is no longer 'now', says Rovelli. We don't share the same time in different places - someone in London will experience different aspects of the day than someone in New York. Same time share only with those in the restricted area.
Time is a story we tell ourselves
Although physics proves it to us other mysteries of time as we know it, the scientist says this is unsatisfactory for humans. Because time is connected to our world, and it is the source of our identity. Rovelli believes that time is the story you are we always tell in the present tense because it is based on our relationship to previous events and feelings that something happened. This narrative that makes us feel self-awareness, it is a delusion. Time is therefore an emotional and psychological experience, that is happening in our head right now.
More information:
cpt.univ-mrs.fr
