- #1
julian
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A thread was started on how unreal is space and time...I recently came across the promotion of a talk by Julian Barbour - http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Outreach/Public_Lectures/Public_Lectures/ (although Barbour has never held any academic position, he is accredited by the GR/LQG community for teaching them all that GR is a relational theory)
His talk was on
"Many attempts to create a unified theory of the universe using relativity and quantum mechanics suggest that time as we seem to experience it does not exist - it may be only a well-founded illusion. The idea of a timeless universe can be traced back to Plato and his insistence that only being is real, while becoming is an illusion. In this talk, Prof. Barbour will explore how the Wheeler-DeWitt equation of quantum gravity suggests the fundamentally timeless nature of the quantum universe. He will also raise unresolved mysteries of our conscious experiences, and why these might provide insight into how a fundamentally timeless universe may be perceived as intensely temporal. A key result of his proposal could be an explanation of the asymmetry between the past and the future."Actually, I myself have had the thought for a very long time that the `now' is ALL there is to reality and the past and the becoming are illusions - a thought I have found depressing, for example what if the `moment' is when you have just got knocked out of the world cup on penalties? When I found out about the timeless nature of GR this thought reoccurred to me. It would seem, maybe I'm reading too much into the Plato reference, that this is what Julian Barbour is talking about, but in a much deeper way than me.
I prefer Rovelli's explanation of evolution from a timeless universe which has to do with how we have limited information about the world - less depressing perhaps as it leaves room for change? Like England winning the world cup.
His talk was on
"Many attempts to create a unified theory of the universe using relativity and quantum mechanics suggest that time as we seem to experience it does not exist - it may be only a well-founded illusion. The idea of a timeless universe can be traced back to Plato and his insistence that only being is real, while becoming is an illusion. In this talk, Prof. Barbour will explore how the Wheeler-DeWitt equation of quantum gravity suggests the fundamentally timeless nature of the quantum universe. He will also raise unresolved mysteries of our conscious experiences, and why these might provide insight into how a fundamentally timeless universe may be perceived as intensely temporal. A key result of his proposal could be an explanation of the asymmetry between the past and the future."Actually, I myself have had the thought for a very long time that the `now' is ALL there is to reality and the past and the becoming are illusions - a thought I have found depressing, for example what if the `moment' is when you have just got knocked out of the world cup on penalties? When I found out about the timeless nature of GR this thought reoccurred to me. It would seem, maybe I'm reading too much into the Plato reference, that this is what Julian Barbour is talking about, but in a much deeper way than me.
I prefer Rovelli's explanation of evolution from a timeless universe which has to do with how we have limited information about the world - less depressing perhaps as it leaves room for change? Like England winning the world cup.
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