Time may not exist

Tim Folger tells, in Discover Magazine, that as scientists slice time into smaller and smaller slices, it appears not to exist:

"One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”

No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time.

Hat-tip: Samizdata, one of whom suggests "Remember this next time you turn up late for an appointment. "

Posted by jk at July 30, 2007 5:11 PM