The Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time

Jason

Watching the NOVA episode "The Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time," and it's interesting because it seems to be agreeing with the ancient Sarvastivadin idea of past, present, and future phenomena being simultaneously present or existing from the point of view of modern physics (an idea that's highly contested by some Buddhist schools, esp. Theravada), or as Albert Einstein put it, that "the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Maybe the Sarvastivadins (along with Parmenides and the Eleatics) had it right after all.

person

I think that was my favorite of the 4 episodes. Kind of blew my mind.

RebeccaS

Gah it's flash. I'll check it out when I'm on my laptop though, it sounds really interesting.

Telly03

I just watched that yesterday... I love interesting deep thinking shows like that.

Zayl

Yup, I figured this out when I watched Carl Sagan's cosmos awhile back. Great stuff, really gets your mind going.

Telly03

There were two ideas I walked away with after watching this... the first - I was awe struck at how brilliant Einstein was to develop his theories on time, especially considering the limited advancement of science for his time that he had to work with... and to have his theories confirmed by flying the atomic clocks to prove the relationship of time and travel.

The 2nd was the idea that the universe is accelerating in it's expansion, to the point that due to space, and the void of opportunities of relationships, time will become irrelevant, exposing the illusion... which brought me back to this gem by Watts

pegembara

Is what we are experiencing really happening in "real" time?

pegembara

Time is a useful concept, not reality. Even this present moment is an immediate past in terms of time. Everything that one sees or hears is an immediate past. Time is required for light or sound waves to register in awareness which may be in microseconds. The present moment is meaningless in terms of time for anything experienced is ungraspable; gone, gone, gone.

But without time present moment is all there is. The "past" or "future" can only be experienced here and now.

Cloud

All that we experience is change, one moment becoming the next. Reality is always "letting go", and so it's little surprise that we suffer because we cling instead.

Cloud

Finally got to watch this whole thing! To me time has always been (rate of) change. This video explains how greater gravity results in a slowing of time, which would mean a slowing of the rate of change. So whatever gravity actually "is" has an effect on the rate of change... is tied to the rate of change of phenomena. At least that's what I got from it. Anyone else?

Perhaps this also explains why the universe may be accelerating, with the furthest regions/sections having less gravity and so changing/moving faster than the rest. Things like dark matter and dark energy may actually be part of our ignorance about gravity's effects rather than invisible stuff we haven't actually found yet. I dunno. I like science but I'm no scientist.

These guys talking about the arrow of time, and wondering why time only goes forward and not backward, seems ridiculous if you think of time as change. I wonder when these guys will actually stop thinking time is still something separate... it's "space-time" now. Seems people are still living in Newtonian time! For whatever reason, I think common sense is lacking in science regarding "time".

"Every time a glass shatters, it's actually carrying forward something set in motion billions of years ago." This is a good metaphor for our lives, for emptiness; how the aggregates or phenomena are not-self, impermanent, unsatisfactory... always flowing without self-essence, part of a larger picture we can not grasp.

The whole thing about past, present and future existing simultaneously seems to also be the product of viewing time as something separate. There's only ever the transition from "now" to "now".

Sile

Can't wait to find the time to watch this!