Is time an illusion?

Question

Wired Magazine recently asked some "Big Questions" in the cover story. This is one of them.

Details:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/bigquestions.html?pg=3#time

Answer 1

Very interesting, I love stuff like this. Personally I agree with Einstien but I haven't delved into this stuff too much. As interesting as it is it kind of makes your head hurt after a while.

Answer 2

Yes, and the proof is sleep. What seems like a second ago you fell asleep yet it is 8 hours later and you wake up. You are conditioned to view time as an illusion. Yet if you could not fall asleep because that last coffee just did it to you then it is a very long night. Then again, the time you spent with your girlfriend flew by, but that sermon by the minister was dragged on forever, which was really only 15 minutes. Time is all relative to what we are doing at the time. If we are having fun then it is never enough but if we are in severe pain it is like a day or a week. The life of a man on earth of 40 years will not be the life of a man on some other planet with less gravity or from someone exposed to space travel. Two identical twins born seconds apart are separated at age twenty five. One goes to work everyday on earth the other becomes an astranaut and goes to outer space living and working on a space shuttle, a lunar lander and eventually a space station on the moon. Thirty years later they join up again at the age of fifty five. Do they still look the same? Are they the same height? Have their bodies aged the same? The answer is no, one will have aged more. The one living on earth subjected to a greater gravitational pull of the earth will be older so gravity and time have taken a toll on both but one to a greater degree. The one living on the moon has been exposed to a lesser gravity and therefore time has been a different illusion for him than for the other twin. The illusion of time begins to establish itself when we start to ask questions like those put to a parent in a ride in the country to visit grandparents. The kids ask, 5 minutes into the ride, " Hey dad, are we there yet?" The illusion has begun.

Answer 3

No, time is not an illusion. We used to think that time was a mechanical construct used to help us keep order in our existence, but per Einstein, time is actually part of the fabric of our universe. It represents the 4th dimension and is not the constant metronome that we like to think it is. As a matter of fact, as we travel faster, time slows down for us until we reach the speed of light, at which point time would come to a halt.

Answer 4

Our best understanding of time comes from General Relativity. It says that time is a dimension like the 3 space dimensions. But it is different in that the interal between two events in space-time is:
dS = dX^2 + dY^2 + dZ^2 - dT^2
The minus sign on the time term is what makes time different from space.
Einstein did not know what time is. He just described it mathematically. Einstein once said" Time is what a clock measures. And a clock is what measures time."
String Theory and Quantum Gravity will completely change our understanding of both space and time when the theory is completed.

Answer 5

no....time isn't an illusion.....lol.

'Wired' is hardly a scientific publication. I doubt they could think their way past a traffic light, let alone try and write about the scientific manifestations and ramifications of time.

Answer 6

Thom1102 said it better that I ever could. The fabric of space-time has 4 dimensions, the 4th being time.

Answer 7

Interesting question time can be an illusion to your mind

Answer 8

It is an illusion.

Answer 9

I'm sorry... I don't have time to answer this!

Answer 10

i don't think so, but it's not as concrete as we think it is.