on Time

June 28th, 2005

By GadgetManiac

Today’s New York Times has an article on the nature and enigma of that thing called time. The piece presents a kind of rambling retrospective of past and current thinkers on the subject of time, touches on string theory, delves into that morass called time travel and the grandfather paradox, and ends by saying that time travel just might be possible … or maybe not. In an attempt to better acquaint us with the subject at hand, the author quotes the great Einstein as saying that “The separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one”. Indeed many theorists agree, saying that both space and time are most likely a sort of illusion or an approximation. Others go on to suggest that time is a merely a byproduct of space itself, or that the geometries of space and time arise spontaneously in the presence of matter/energy. The article makes for a good read. It includes a joke about the possibility of still attending (its now the end of June) the The Time Traveler Convention held at MIT on May 7, 2005. They throw in the following graphic, which portrays space-time as a kind of loaf of bread whose slices are not necessarily parallel to each other … World line according to the New York Times Remembrance of Things Future: The Mystery of Time - NYT June 28, 2005