Time Is of the Essence… or Is It? 

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By far one of my favorite channels on RU-vid, thank you!

This amount of participants - 4 and a moderator - seems perfect. Each had the chance to talk and none sat silent too long. I've watched some events like this with more people and it they seem unruly and unnecessarily shallow.

Such a fantastic talk. This moderator did an above average job of gently steering the conversation and not leaving any of the four experts behind. In addition, I felt everything was clearly explained such that I have the illusion of a deeper understanding.

This talk is so incredibly profound at times, I've watched it 4 times in a row and keep catching better understanding each successive viewing. Terrific upload thanks again

Just discovered this channel two hours ago, can''t stop watching.

Good clock, bad clock.. that's how you interrogate time bandits.

Excellent choice of moderator.

Carlo is so convincing! This video took me to his conferences and his books, I’m so sold on his loop quantum gravity 👌🏼

Even though the moving clocks number on top is lower, for me watching the clocks the same amount of time is going by though. I can watch two clocks differ but the exact same time has passed for me witnessing both clocks. This is crazy stuff

I liked the sentence , from Lee , saying the laws of nature evolve ! What a sentence to think about after reading my compendiums in physics

Watching these makes me feel like making up for not having been to higher education. Great talk and topic

51:15 this guy is really going pleases... He truly convinced me that time is fundamentally linked to the fabric of the universe...🤯👏👌

When my loved ones, through time, passed away, I definitely WAS consoled by knowing that whatever has happened will always exist ... we are all still there/then ...

Thank you, World Science Festival, for the new moderator. He is a great fit.

Big fan of Jim Holt, did a great job moderating this amazing discussion

I really enjoyed this video. Thank you to the wonderful panel. Keep producing excellent videos like this!

"Time" is equivalent to a micrometer, a centimeter, a kilometer, a mile ... like a tape measure, it counts the the lightyears and the parsecs of distance. It counts the duration that some process takes. It is even an abstract tool of statistics. But, "Time" cannot be reified into a material object, and like the set of numbers, is merely an abstract tool of measurement, and to assist our understanding of the actual material universe we exist *Now* in, until our purpose here in life is "noted" as fulfilled.

1. Watches video. 2. More questions emerge than answers found in this video. 3. Finds problems formulating those questions. 4. Writes useless comment. 5. Profit?

I know this is an older video, but man, it's still one of the best WSF videos. What an amazing conversation to be able to witness among such great thinkers.

This is a great channel. They stimulate my mind. All Americans should watch this kind of stuff, and forget reality television and game shows

This is THE BEST RU-vid channel. 👍

Wow what a discussion! I love the final concept right at the end from Vijay, that he doesn't like having 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time .. 2 of space and 2 of time would be much more sensible 🤯

Thanks so much for the upload! Time is something that we got to discuss more and more. I think that's the way we gonna evolve our theories and perhaps finally unite them! Because , in the end everything must be connected somehow. But we can't be really sure. And that's amazing! Cheers!

I think this, along with the limits of our understanding debate, is my favourite video. Prof. David Albert is such an eloquent speaker.

ive been watching this over and over, so much info !!!!!! THANKS!!!

I appreciate VJ's visual explanations of time.

So glad I stumbled onto this channel, it’s quite informational and amazing. Love all the smart minds coming together and debating rationally (for the most part haha)

Just because a high altitude clock is slower it doesn't mean that time is slower just the mechanical operation is slower, time doesnt need clock to govern it as time is not a mechanical operation. Time is abstract.

Fantastic panel. Speakers got deep into the marvelous topic of time. Much deeper than "the clock of the photon" repeated by many other videos, which makes no sense, even not in unintuitive sense.

This was a very good session - thanks guys!

The light clock experiment is excellent! (around 14:00) Easily the best experimental approach I've ever seen for showing the observational relationship between light and space-time. Doesn't get much simpler than that,. Genius!

When no one was observing...how much time did it take for time to pass until the first living oberver came about ? Note that this question brings into focus the problem of how the nature of time depends on an observer...and what is an observer...what is life...is time really a measurable parameter ? I love that question !

Thank you for the time stamps!

Vijay is fantastic! Such simple and effective explanations and examples,

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

Such a complicated discussion on a very simple subject. TIME is just the way we measure the length of an event. It is the event that matters and needs to be measured in every way to see its value. There is no such thing as nothing. The cycle of existence and life is wall we are realy defining. Design denotes that an intelligence was involved. Those intelligences were mostly involuntary and some voluntary when it evolved. Existing is involuntary and living is voluntary. We know something is true when we can make it work in our life and create it for ourselves. When we can manipulate and create something we then know we are right.

One of the V best WSF talks. Challenging, profound, the concepts well explained but above all - despite the different views - respectful and constructive. WSF guys PLEASE reconvene this panel & moderator for a part 2 next year! Loved it. ...Hᴜɢʜ….ツ

Om my ...this is the first time I've seen anyone make it clear why there is a difference in moving time (recorded) of the speed of light ... wow Thank You.

Given:The furthermost distance (back in spacetime) that we see in the observable universe, is “Cosmic Microwave Background” (plasma energy) evenly distributed all around us, and the spacetime separation (chasm) between the observable universe and Cosmic Background is increasing. Premise_1: Cosmic Background is a sphere that encompasses all space, time, energy and matter, and earth is at the center. Premise_2: The observable universe originated with and at Cosmic Background. Premise_3: Everything within the observable universe is “falling away” from (within) Cosmic Background, forever compressing within the gravity well at the centroid of all matter, toward complete separation and “utter darkness”. Hypothesis: Time is space, in the form of gravity bubbles, that are displaced (flowing-out) from within all matter, into the growing chasm between the furthest extent of the observable universe and Cosmic Background, as a consequence of "falling away".

So far Davit Albert is the one among all (in all SF videos) that has the most profound explanations of time.

Time is only the rate at which change occurs, of itself it has no substance and therefore not subject to physical laws. This discussion is absolutely nonsensical.

I like how clear Carlo and Vijay are. I read Carlo's book about time and it was a great read, highly recommended , it's called The Order of Time 👍

Wonderful upload! Thanks you

Very profound and thought provoking! Thank you all for all of your dedication and for sharing with the world.

I will never waste time again (if it exists). Great, great. WSF.

Love the video Thank you for posting it

Smolin is the greatest thinker among them. I love Smolin. Thanks for this!

A thought I had which seems fun to me anyway: The progression (direction) of events, and of time itself may be very different. That is, although events seem to follow one after the other (moving toward the future, because of the Big Bang), the "time" for them to take place in is unfolding (flowing) from the future through the present and into the past. Picture a reel to reel tape recorder. The unrecorded tape (future) passes through the record head (present) and onto the take-up reel (the past - history). Time in itself may well "move" in such a manner, if it can be said to move at all.

World Science Festival makes my day, everyday.

Great debate. Wish the BBC had such brilliant DEBATES!

"His deadlines are an illusion" made me guffaw

Man I could listen to Lee for hours

Many thanks WSF you are the best!

Brilliant. Thanks to all the scientists who attended . . . 🔬

I wonder, is it possible that gravity has an effect on the motion of the atom in the atomic clock rather than on time its self? If so then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that gravity may not in fact change time, only the motion of the device mesuring it?

Question - if time slows as we approach the speed of light, is a particle moving at the speed of light (photon) timeless? Meaning time is "stopped" or in other words, is non existent for this particle. If there is no time for the light speed energy particles that make up our universe then its as if they are everywhere instantly as time does not pass for them. Space then does not exist to a light speed particle as we know it and movement in everyday terms is not existent. Is this the wave-like behavior we see in quantum experiments like double slit or account for the odd "spooky action at a distance." What does physics say about the time properties of a particle actually moving at the speed of light ??

A great discussion!! Awesome! ❤❤❤

Towards the end point of your discussions Lee. SMOLIN said the process underlying time is important. So I agree with Lee. The process dynamics is instantaneous everywhere(spooky action beyond light ) before light speed exists at all . The wave crest of the action of the process in light. is always moving in spacetime. v= c.

Presenter: Jim Holt Panelists: Lee Smolin, CArlo Rovelli, Vijay Balasubramanian, David Albert

when you forget you are eternal you need time to remember

58:28 I've always thought this, we don't access time, matter moves and changes that's all. Things change in space. Time is just a snapshot we take of a specific still movement but the world never stops. Movement is eternal.

You could say, time well spent watching this

While I was watching this video, I felt very angry. I wondered why all of these scientists are using the word "dynamical" so much. Watch the video again. They say that word many times. It made me really upset because I believed that it was not a word, and that the proper word was "dynamic“. But then I looked it up and found that actually "dynamical" is really a word. Say nothing of the reality of time and space, today I learned that dynamical is really a word.

Somebody needs to make a dubstep that plays to the beat of Lee's hand movement.

Love as an emergent phenomenon ... as is time ... now that is a notion I can get into!

I love this channel! Keep it up!

Time is an abstraction, isn't it? Things move; that's real.

What is time? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

Time exists where change exists. Isn't it that simple

Time is a representation of rhythmic oscillating occurrences without which no indication of dimensionalism could ever exist anywhere in our Universe for life as we know it.

I love this this stuff.

My dog knows when its time for his walk.

Absolutely fascinating discussion of the nature of time. What a joy it is to watch science programs like this versus the myriad of garbage that plays out on the internet.

Consciousness observation leads to wave function collapse and wave function collapse leads to consciousness. This oscillation is what creates a sense of time. It is a rigid interaction, there is no "speed of time" or "separate" time. It's just the number of collapses versus a particular state of the universe.

Time is ALL WAS IN MOCHION MOVING" FOURWOURD" !!

that intro was TOP NOTCH !!!!!!

You get x amount of time in this body. Let x be full of joy and gratitude. Dont be ruled by the ego. The ego is not real. Love is.

I love wasting time on youtube

What is with Lee Smolin's hand? Probably the most distracting, meaningless and detrimental gesturing I've ever seen from a person. His poor verbal enunciation is hard enough to follow, and with the non-stop bouncing hand I have to hide the browser window to understand him. Somebody needs to talk to him about this.

Time is common ground for people to interact with others.For synchronization. A concept.

I hypothesize that time is a delay, a predicament of our universe. It is a minute delay is not a constant. It occurs over and over allowing everything that has ever happened. An example of a thing unaffected by this delay is “ strange action at a distance” or simultaneity. With a camera, you may capture this recurring (repeated) delay via a “time exposure”.

it´s hard to listen to lee he sounds half drunk half asleep and speaks terribly monotone

How is it that in moving in a line, the rate of time is velocity dependent but in a gravitational field, it is acceleration dependent. That is, in free space, moving in an inertial reference frame, I can recognize relative motion of other reference frames and that time is passing at a different rate for it relative to me. (I have never examined the combined effect of lack of simultaneity, along with time dilation and length compression on what exactly the observer measures in observation of an external reference frame of different velocity. There is the possibility that the combined effects cancel each other out, at least in observation.) What is acceleration? Acceleration, is by Einstein's definition, internally identifiable in the reference frame. I feel a force acting upon my feet, I am accelerating. This is different from Newton's definition where it is identified by reference to external reference frames. This is most significant with respect to a gravitational field. With respect to Earth, as I fall, I am accelerating relative to the Earth. I am not, though, internally experiencing acceleration. As I stand on the ground, I feel acceleration as I do in an accelerating in a rocket. This is just the standard difference pointed to by Einstein. It is extremely important to distinguish these fully as it is easy, in consideration of acceleration to inadvertently apply the Newtonian measure, seeing it externally rather than internal to the reference frame. There are a number of asymmetries. I start my considerations with the following; In linear motion, there is both a tangential (linear) velocity and acceleration. The rate of time decelerates with acceleration and is decreased in accordance with the velocity. In a gravitational field (like standing on a large mass), there is no linear motion and there is an acceleration. The rate of time is decreased in accordance with the acceleration. In rotational motion, there is a tangential velocity and a perpendicular acceleration. The rate is time is decreased. Time does not decelerate due to the perpendicular acceleration. There are other asymmetries that I have not yet fully identified. Consider E-acceleration. I can accelerate by ejecting mass. (This is both a Newtonian and Einsteinian acceleration. Care should be taken in conceptualization. Side note, if I eject all mass, becoming massless, then by nature, do I not accelerate to the speed of light?) A massless charge in an electric field does not have Einsteinian acceleration. Einsteinian acceleration is a function of mass. Or is it that this acceleration does exist but requires mass to detect it? There seems to be another asymmetry in that if a body is in freefall, in a gravitational field, and that field is suddenly reversed, then would the body E-celleration. (sorry, coining terms on the fly.)

This is a fascinating topic....I have studied the philosophy of C. S. Peirce, and Lee Smolin's notion of time as fundamental rather than emergent is in concord with Peirce's theory of evolutionary love, or Agapasm. The laws of nature are dynamic, and move toward a more ordered universe as does our understanding of these laws.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but was what Lee Smolin described at 1:06:09 compatible with a growing block universe? Or is that something he would be dismissive of as well?

Terrific content. Brilliant presentation. Humor deftly employed. Thanks Professor Greene for bringing us The World Science Festival!

Rovelli says that time is not fundamental and that reality is "made of happenings ". But happening is a temporal concept. I agree with the view that "a world in which nothing happens is a world without time". But that's not the world we live in. I agree that "things don't happen IN time", as Rovelli says. Time is not a container, not a superimposed, superadded structure. But, as I see it, "time" is the word we use to describe the fact that things happen. What does it mean for something to happen? How can you make sense of that concept except than in temporal terms? In the end, to cut to the chase and clear the discussions about time from pure semantics, one needs to ask: Do you believe there is genuine introduction of novelty in reality? If so, reality is truly creative, truly "generative" and the future is open, undetermined. This is the sense in which, I think, time is "fundamental" (although I don't like this word, as it stinks of reductionism). Also, this is the only possible basis for believing in freedom of the will and freedom of action. Not unconstrained freedom, but freedom nonetheless. Instead, if you don't think there is genuine novelty generation in reality, then reality is like a movie: the film is all there "from the beginning", each frame is there "already". And this is incompatible with free will and freedom of action. Or to use another metaphor, either you think reality is akin to a CD, where the information of each track is already there (and this is ultimately a very Platonic conception of reality: what's "really real" is unchanging, eternal ideas/forms), or you think reality is like a music that is being created and played for the first time, which unfolds anew (of course the music can have repeating patterns within it, but as a whole it's continuous introduction of novelty). I believe (with Heraclitus, with Bergson) the latter is the case: reality is truly creative and truly dynamic. This is the sense in which I believe time is as real as it gets. But time in this sense is "qualitative multiplicity", to use Bergsonian language, heterogeneity. Physics programmatically expelled the qualitative from its domain of study since the time of Galileo (at least). No wonder it cannot account for the reality of qualitative time. Physics only deals with its static, quantitative, measurable shadow: spatialised time. As Bergson writes in "The Creative Mind": "real time [...] eludes mathematical treatment ".

Thought provoking and thoroughly absorbing. thanks for the sleepless nights. ;)

35:50 - 39:05 Prof Albert about SpaceTime as Emergent rather than as Fundamental - oh yes !

So time is our perception of the following of an effect from a cause including the physical effects of entropy? This would mean that time does not exist separately from matter. It is just a perception of our limited brains?

Fascinating

14:00... that is why when i come home everyday i have to get my wrist watch sycronized with the kitchen clock...

Fascinating discussion. I think our confusion lies in our arbitrary distinction between what we call "fundamental" and what we call "emergent". *If we propose that causality a.k.a. the arrow of time doesn't exist, why do we then assume an arrow between scales to exist?* Why do we assume symmetry in one case and not in the other? Both assumptions violate *the cosmological principle: No perspective should be regarded as special.* Thus, the very small scales of quantum gravity are not any more fundamental than the scales of turbulent flow of electromagnetic gas eruptions on the surface of a star. The laws of the very small scales can be expressed as _emerging_ from the averaging over statistics of large scale phenomena. This is exactly what Feynnman did: Integrating an infinite sum over all possible historys. This gives us two possible perspectives, both are valid: 1) If we define quantum relativity (strings, loops, standard model) as fundamental, then emergent properties of spacetime appear. 2) If we percieve spacetime as fundamental, then emergent properties of the laws of nature appear. This suggests that there is no reason for most physicists and philosophers to resist against the ideas of Lee Smolin and Eric Verlinde. Nothing is absolutlely fundamental, nor is anything absolutely emergent. Maybe this is the deeper concept of Super Relativity.

One of the speakers talked about a loss of information as you approach a black hole and It brings to mind a moon documentary I saw years ago where a NASA scientist was saying they had lost the information to get us back to the moon which still puzzles me.

What if you don't think of time as a constant? The passage of time changes the father from ground you get, my thought just now was this, "it is a form of measure, need to expand that measure the further from the point of the one observing/measuring/pondering what's next. Same with looking smaller I believe." What does that "idea" look like mathematically for the expansion of "our" universe?

8:00 He gave me a great idea for a comic of a clock.

1:01.17 ish... Lee Your activity of time does reduce to a known law. That law is entropy. From differential, time emerges as flow. So does higher dimension. What you folks really need to say is that time is a measure of entropy. Picture this: a system with a completely smooth, even temperature. No variation down to the smallest order. Now try and measure time in that system and not from some external absolute frame of reference. You cannot measure time, or even temperature. In fact, this is all that is needed, really, to unite forces in that you can no longer distinguish from them.

Nice!!

To pull it into the subject of time we only have it for a way to measure past and present using now as a reference point. Through out the past one would count the things there repetitive in rhythm