5 ms·
OP here. This is a blog post for a science comedy podcast, so the science is accurate but delivered with about 47% more workplace humour than you'd find in Phys
by TMEHpodcast 1y ago
OP here. This is a blog post for a science comedy podcast, so the science is accurate but delivered with about 47% more workplace humour than you'd find in Physical Review Letters.
The core premise is based on real, cutting-edge physics research, though it's still an active area of debate.
The Page-Wootters mechanism (proposed in 1983, experimentally validated by Moreva et al. in 2013-2015) does show that time can emerge from quantum entanglement between subsystems. In their experiments, time exists for observers inside entangled quantum systems but not for external observers viewing the whole system.
The Wheeler-DeWitt equation really does lack a time parameter, creating what physicists call the "Problem of Time" in quantum gravity. And there is genuine convergence across string theory, loop quantum gravity, and causal set theory toward "emergent spacetime" models.
However, this doesn't mean time is "fake", it suggests time might be like temperature, which is real and measurable but emerges from more fundamental processes (molecular motion). The research indicates time could emerge from quantum information rather than being a fundamental dimension.
The 2023-2025 research I mentioned (cosmological time dilation measurements, atomic clock advances) is real, though the interpretation that "consciousness creates time" is more speculative than the underlying quantum mechanics.
So yes, "emergent time" is a serious scientific hypothesis with experimental support, but science is still figuring out exactly what that means for our understanding of reality.
- anon12315 1y agoThe first half threw me in a bit of despair and identity death, and the second half lifted me back up. Love this. edit: feel free to include me in as one of the feedbacks.
- qntmfred 1y agoyou used the word instant quite a bit. and the word moment a few times. notably, to define what an instant is. was there any particular reason you didn't just use the term moment throughout?
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoProbably subconscious. I tend to use "instant" when trying to sound more technical/physics-y and "moment" when being more conversational. If time is emergent, both words are describing the same phenomenon. It's like the difference between saying "temporal coordinate" versus "when", one sounds more scientific but they're pointing at the same thing.
- johnisgood 1y agoThis might be a really dumb question, but how do you use "temporal coordinate" in a sentence where you would use "when"? For example: "When I walked my dog ..."? :D
- nunodonato 1y agoProbably something like "In a strike of great coincidence, we both met because we went walking our dogs at the same temporal coordinate"
- johnisgood 1y agoThanks! I will be using it. :D Are there any more examples besides "when" -> "temporal coordinate"?
- cwmoore 1y agoNot at this moment.
- andsoitis 1y ago> emerges from more fundamental processes What do you make of Assembly Theory’s reinterpretation of time as a physical property, closely linked to the complexity and history of objects?
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoSo from what I understand from this theory, a smartphone carries more "temporal weight" than a simple molecule based on its assembly history. Feels complementary to quantum emergence rather than contradictory. Maybe quantum correlations create the substrate for temporal experience, while assembly complexity determines how much temporal depth objects carry within that framework. Both treat time as emergent from physical processes rather than fundamental, just at different scales.
- HappMacDonald 1y agoI'm waiting for models that do a better job of making space an emergent property instead (or in addition to) time. Distance and Locality seem to be the only real factors of space that have any bearing on QM or even GR, after all. So what really even is this "distance" thing that seems to be so pervasive that it's fantastically easy to take for granted?
- dleeftink 1y agoLove this. Are you familiar with chronemics, or the study of the perception of time? I think this ties in greatly. The work from Achim Landwehr and Tobias Winnerling that contextualises historic (ana/meta) chronisms — how we relate and position ourselves between and across times — especially resonates [1]. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronemics [1]: Landwehr, A., & Winnerling, T. (2019). Chronisms: on the past and future of the relation of times. Rethinking History, 23(4), 435-455.
- Onewildgamer 1y agoI was grinning ear to ear reading this, laughed together with a co-worker. What a brilliant, beautiful, thought provoking, ridiculous genius of a comedy. Thank you, I felt both my intelligent and comic parts of the brain were hanging out in a bar.
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoThank you so much for the kind words—this made my day. Would it be alright if I quoted this on the website? It really captures what the podcast aims for.
- Onewildgamer 1y agoCertainly, it's an honour to be quantum entangled into the timeless archives of the internet
- cantor_S_drug 1y agoWrite one on the idea when "simulation of reality is more real than reality itself". Reality computes laws of universe only till planck scale while the simulation futuristic humans created computes till (planck scale)^3
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- drcongo 1y agoYou just gained an extra podcast subscriber. Really looking forward to going through the back catalogue.
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoThank you! Although don’t go back too far, season one is admittedly a bit of a mess, conceptually ok in places but narratively scattered, but like a corporate handbook that's been photocopied too many times. Season two focuses on space (the big), quantum (the small), and space history (the old) and of course the corporate comedy.
- miriam_catira 1y agoThank you for making this podcast, not just this post, but all of it. I now know how I will be participating in the creation of reality for the foreseeable future (at least as it applies to my local experience of it).
- GTP 1y agoGreat piece! However, I think there's something you literally got "upside-down": AFAIK it's our head that ages slower than our feet, due to the face that it is moving faster.
- TMEHpodcast 1y agoActually no. Gravity is slightly weaker at your head than at your feet (because it’s farther from Earth’s center). According to general relativity, clocks tick faster in weaker gravity. The effect of your head being higher up outweighs the fact that it’s moving slightly faster due to Earth’s rotation. If you’re standing up, your head experiences more time than your feet, by about 6.2 nanoseconds per year. So your brain is slightly older than your toes.
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- GTP 1y agoInteresting, I didn't know about the time change due to gravity. Thank you for the explanation.