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- TL;DR Summary
- One of the most widespread misunderstandings of physics: Is time an "illusion"?
I keep reading things like the following (for me not correct) on different websites like researchgate (coming from supposedly phd.), so I wanted to make sure there is no flaw in my thinking.
One example of a comment I've read was:
"TIME is an ILLUSION according to EINSTEIN - (the space-time continuum)!
Albert Einstein was very clear in his day. Physicists are very clear now. Time is not absolute, despite what common sense tells you and me. Time is relative, and flexible and, according to Einstein, "the dividing line between past, present, and future is an illusion". So reality is ultimately TIMELESS. This sounds pretty bizarre from the view of classical physics, but from the view of consciousness theory and spirituality, it fits in perfectly."Now the last sentence alone hints at a non-physicist, but what bothers me are the quotes from Einstein. Did Einstein really say "time is an illusion" and that "reality is timeless".
According to special relativity for an event b happening outside a light cone of an event a, there is a reference frame in which event a and b happen at the same time, BUT in the light cone of event a there is still past, present and future (which are NOT happening at the same time) and the events in the light cone are causally connected. Did I understand something wrong or are so many people sure of the idea that time is an illusion?
One example of a comment I've read was:
"TIME is an ILLUSION according to EINSTEIN - (the space-time continuum)!
Albert Einstein was very clear in his day. Physicists are very clear now. Time is not absolute, despite what common sense tells you and me. Time is relative, and flexible and, according to Einstein, "the dividing line between past, present, and future is an illusion". So reality is ultimately TIMELESS. This sounds pretty bizarre from the view of classical physics, but from the view of consciousness theory and spirituality, it fits in perfectly."Now the last sentence alone hints at a non-physicist, but what bothers me are the quotes from Einstein. Did Einstein really say "time is an illusion" and that "reality is timeless".
According to special relativity for an event b happening outside a light cone of an event a, there is a reference frame in which event a and b happen at the same time, BUT in the light cone of event a there is still past, present and future (which are NOT happening at the same time) and the events in the light cone are causally connected. Did I understand something wrong or are so many people sure of the idea that time is an illusion?