This may seem counterintuitive. After all, quantum mechanics is considered the newer version of things—the one that destabilizes the foundation of physics in order to be reconciled with the classical model. But time has a unique role in quantum systems. After all, everything in a particular time, defined in some objective way, is knitted together through quantum interactions until it forms a capture of the entire universe (if you zoom out enough).
In their paper, Coppo and his coauthors turn the Page and Wootters approach into a real concept for a clock. Within quantum physics, a clock isn’t much like the one you wear on your wrist or hang in your office—it’s anything that has a predictable and uniform behavior that can be used as a measurement. (For example, this 2021 Quanta article lists increasingly stinky garbage as a kind of clock!)
New Scientist explains that Page and Wootters wondered if our world is so quantumly entangled within itself that any visible passing of time is a symptom of entanglement. They also suggested that we ourselves are implicated in that entanglement just by seeing the passage of time—because someone outside of the entangled system would see it standing still. The “clock,” therefore, is the item within the entangled system that shows time passing.
It’s easy to see why this theory has stayed mostly abstract for over 40 years. To turn it into something with measurements based in real life observation, scientists took iconic physics equations and restricted them to conditions that match the Page and Wootters scenario. They considered two systems that are entangled but do not interact, where one system is a harmonic oscillator—like a quartz timing in a watch, or a pendulum.
Their solution may prove to be consistent within classical and quantum mechanics, because when enough particles are placed into each quantum system—when it reaches the threshold called “macroscopic,” based on mass—the systems align with classical physics as well.
That‘s a big deal—if our entire, very macroscopic world fits into this definition of time based on entanglement, it means everything around us is entangled. Things would need to be entangled almost by definition in order to be part of our observable world. And it would mean that anything we see where time passes (no matter how far away it is) is linked with us in a vital way.
“Time May Actually Be One Big Illusion”
More of a Globalist rag than an ‘illusion’.
“Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so.”
As the kids say…..
These scientists need to go outside and touch grass.
We are all inside the Matrix.
You mean I’m really still young and handsome?
Sold for a dollar once.
If there's no time, then there's no life, no growth, no history and no future, just to mention a few impossibles.
Scientists have been tinkering around with theories for millenniums but there's not much real science in them. That's why they almost always remain 'theories'.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
seems very deterministic in the end
Time is relative to the observer.
It is not an independent constant.
In their paper, Coppo and his coauthors turn the Page and Wootters approach into a real concept for a clock. Within quantum physics, a clock isn’t much like the one you wear on your wrist or hang in your office—it’s anything that has a predictable and uniform behavior that can be used as a measurement. (For example, this 2021 Quanta article lists increasingly stinky garbage as a kind of clock!)
Einstein described time as the result of matter moving through space.
seems very deterministic in the end
Hmmmm Maybe God created time so everything wouldn’t happen at once.
Time is entirely a creation of the human mind. In the real world there is only matter and space.
“Time May Actually Be One Big Illusion”
I did not get that impression from the article.
Imagine every particle and wave being at some particular location at some particular moment. (Quantum Mechanics says we cannot predict or “know” such things at the quantum scale, only come up with probabilities).
Imagine a situation wherein every particle and wave ceased to move, at all.
There would be no “time”.
But in the cosmos we live in, there is movement. Time is just the perception of the constant changes of position.