Physicist here. I'd be very careful.. one of the major problems with modern physics, the field and people practicing it, is that they layer explanations with me

Physicist here. I'd be very careful.. one of the major problems with modern physics, the field and people practicing it, is that they layer explanations with metaphors, and are too quick to embrace mysterious explanations. Much of this stems from the history of quantum mechanics, which was mathematically formalized a generation before intuitive interpretations were worked out by Everett, DeWitt, Bohm, etc. Still to this day physics students are taught "Don't try to make sense of it; humans aren't meant to understand. Just shut up and calculate." by teachers who followed the same advice and knew nothing else. This is unfortunate as embracing mysteries keeps one from seeking out more fundamental interpretations that actually provide real insight into how things work. Time and space being an illusion are similar. These notions come from the mathematics which can be formulated in such a way that time and/or space (depending on the theory) are not axiomatic assumptions but rather emergent artifacts of a more fundamental timeless (or rather, time-arrow-less) or spaceless (rather, non-local) formulations. But that's just math. Time and space are as real as anything else. If you doubt that, I have a 23-story window you can walk out of.