Is Time an Illusion?

 

In 2016 I watched the very good sci-fi movie Arrival. In that movie several alien ships mysteriously settle on multiple locations on earth. Each nation sends their team to investigate. In this movie we follow, of course, the american team. The humans wonder why the aliens have seeked contact and they say because in the future they'll need our help. That's an odd answer. As the movie goes on the aliens tell us to learn about their devices, machines, physics we must learn their language. As their concept of time is a very strange one and we must learn this before we can advance philosophically and technologically.

Why am I talking about a movie? Well that movie's plot is related to a physics article I read today about what time means in modern physics. And there is not a clear answer nor is it easy to understand as we experience time in our daily lives as something universal and linear. While in physics and cosmology it's not like that. For example time goes at different speeds depending on the speed of each observer. Time is also distorted by gravity.

As I was reading this article and seeing at the end that it was written by someone with a PhD in philosophy I understand that to understand better how time works in physics we must change the way we think about time. Anyway read the very interesting article: Is Time an Illusion here.