Annaka Harris: “I think the flow of time is not part of the fundamental structure of reality,” theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli tells me. He is currently working on a theory of quantum gravity in which the variable of time plays no part.”
Tag: Carlo Rovelli
Mathematicians debate the war on math
Carlo Rovelli stops short of saying that 2+2=5 but the article gives every sense that many would love to go there if only they could get some kind of a nudge. It is far to say that the war on Platonism is just the war on math, PhD version.
Proposed black hole information paradox solution: They become white holes
According to a new paper, white holes, the theoretical opposite of black holes, may account for dark matter, and may even predate the universe. They may even, according to Carlo Rovelli, explain the direction of time: A black hole is one prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Another is known as a white hole, Read More…
Carlo Rovelli: The present is a localized rather than global phenomenon
Carlo Rovelli, author of The Order of Time, that there is neither space nor time: A present that is common throughout the whole universe does not exist. Events are not ordered in pasts, presents, and futures; they are only “partially” ordered. There is a present that is near to us, but nothing that is “present” Read More…
Rob Sheldon’s thoughts on physicists’ “warped” view of time
Further to Carlo Rovelli’s views on time travel (only a technological problem, not a scientific one) and the order of time in general, views, as set out in The Order of Time, our color commentator Rob Sheldon offers, — If I can speculate about what goes on in physicist’s heads, this issue about time is an attempt Read More…
Cosmologist Carlo Rovelli: Future time travel only a technological problem
Not a scientific one. Dan Falk interviews physicist Carlo Rovelli about “about the nature of time, whether it has a beginning and if humans might one day master time travel:” Could time travel ever be possible? Well, “time traveling” is what we do all our lives, isn’t it? But you mean, can we jump quickly Read More…
Cosmologist: Philosophy is essential to the development of physics.
From Carlo Rovelli at Scientific American: Against Philosophy is the title of a chapter of a book by one of the great physicists of the last generation: Steven Weinberg.1 Weinberg argues eloquently that philosophy is more damaging than helpful for physics—it is often a straightjacket that physicists have to free themselves from. Stephen Hawking famously Read More…
Does physics deconstruct our sense of time?
From Andrew Jaffe at Nature, reviewing Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time: According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Read More…