THE ILLUSION OF TIME

Time is the continued order of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience. Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions. It has been said that time is an illusion; our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality. Reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present and future. The whole universe obeys the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, out of which time emerges. One idea put forward is a physics without time. The apparent existence of time- in our perceptions and in physical descriptions, comes not from knowledge, but from ignorance. Forward in time is the direction in which entropy or randomness increases, and in which we gain information. One proposal called the crumbling of time, attempts to show how established physics theories deconstruct our common-sense ideas. Einstein showed us that there is nothing special about now; even past and future are not always well defined. In space and time two events occuring far apart might even happen in one order when viewed by one observer, and in the opposite order when viewed by another observer. It can be said the flow of time is a subjective feature of the universe, not an objective part of the physical description. Our perception of times flow is affected by our inability to see the world in all its detail. Quantum uncertainty means we cannot know the positions and speeds of all the particles in the universe. If we could there would be no entropy and no unravelling of time. This is referred to as thermal time hypothesis.