Author: Paul Ratner / Source: Big Think
- Time may not be passing at all, says the Block Universe Theory.
- Time travel may be possible.
- Your perception of time is likely relative to you and limited.
We seem to perceive time as passing in one direction. After all, we can’t just just forward to the future or revisit our past if we felt like it.
Every minute of every day appears to move us ahead, pulling us through our lives towards an inexorable demise. At least that’s what the conventional experience of time tells us. But what if your present, past, and future all existed already? Time, from that point of view, would not flow.The block universe theory says that our universe may be looked at as a giant four-dimensional block of spacetime, containing all the things that ever happen, explained Dr. Kristie Miller, the joint director for the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney.
In the block universe, there is no “now” or present. All moments that exist are just relative to each other within the three spacial dimensions and one time dimension. Your sense of the present is just reflecting where in the block universe you are at that instance. The “past” is just a slice of the universe at an earlier location while the “future” is at a later location.
So, is time just an elaborate mind trick? And more importantly – is time travel possible?
Dr. Miller’s answer to that is “yes”. Of course, just hypothetically, since we’d need to figure out first how to travel at “some reasonable percentage of the speed of light”. Going to the…
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