Here’s an intriguing idea.What if you were informed that everything in your life was pre-planned? Even crazier, what if yourhistory, present, and future are all taking place right now?

An incredible new theoryestablished as the “block universe” theory ᴀsserts that time does not actually“flow like a river”; rather, everything is ever-present.

Dr. Bradford Skow, a philosophyprofessor at the Mᴀssachusetts Insтιтute of Technology, proposes that if we”look down” on the cosmos as if it were a piece of paper, we wouldsee time stretched out in all directions, just as we perceive space at anygiven time.

Is it possible that we only seetime as essentially linear because that is what our human brains are capable ofcomprehending?

Let’s delve a bit more intothis interesting new theory and what it could signify for our existence. Dr. Skow is not the firstscientist to question how humans perceive time.

Einstein proposed a theory ofunified space and time in 1915. He suggests in his general theory of relativitythat space-time adopts a manifold or continuous structure. When seen together,they form a four-dimensional vector space. This vector is referred to as the”block theory.”

“The distinction between past,present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Einstein’s theory is widelyregarded as the most accurate explanation of what the cosmos means in a cosmicsense. As a result, it is not unreasonable to consider the existence of a blockuniverse.

Dr. Skow wholeheartedlyendorses this viewpoint. Instead of believing that time and events pᴀss us byand then vanish, perhaps we might believe that they continue to exist andcoexist in different portions of space-time. It’s simply that we can’t getanywhere outside of this block

When you try to wrap your brainaround this hypothesis, you’ll see that it has the potential to transform theway we think about time travel.

If this theory is correct, wecannot just go across time and modify it. It would be impossible to construct”grandfather paradoxes” if everything was happening at the same time— your history, present, and future all set out in space.

You wouldn’t be implementingany drastic modifications. Instead, you will only travel through time,experiencing it as it is and always has been. Dr. Skow’s new idea wasrecently followed by another, equally contentious theory.

Dr. Julian Barbour, a physicistin the United Kingdom, and other scientists think that when the Big Bangoccurred, the cosmos generated a mirror universe

And, get this, time reverses inthis mirror realm. In this parallel reality,individuals awaken from death, live out their old age, and wait until they areold enough to start a profession and then go to school. Doesn’t it soundstrange?

However, if this theory iscorrect, it might provide a solution to some of the most difficult physicschallenges we now face.

As an example: What happened to all of theantimatter after the Big Bang? And why does  time go in only onedirection? This may seem paradoxical to the block universe idea, but it doesprovide answers to some of our most perplexing fundamental physics problems.

Entropy is what we all thinkabout when we think of time. Entropy is the degree of chaos in a system thatwill ultimately cause it to collapse. It is present in everything, includingour bodies, computers, and motors. And when entropy rises exponentially, as italways does, it will eat its system.

Sean Carroll, a Caltechprofessor, and Jennifer Chen, a graduate student, decided to look at time in anew way. They considered it in terms of gravity.

By examining 1,000 particlesand applying Newtonian physics, they discovered evidence that the mirroruniverse may exist.

All of these new radicaltheories are interesting to think about and discuss. But if one of them iscorrect, it raises even more problems.

Is there a chance for evolutionin the way we know it if time is ever-present? So, what is the purpose and meaningof life if we exist as we are, with no possibility of change?

In this sense, temporal debateswill always exist. And it’s unclear if we’ll ever be able to uncover any of theanswers, let alone properly grasp them.

Perhaps the magic isn’t inhaving the solution, but in the quest to find it. It might be our method ofcomprehending our existence.

Reference(s):

MIT 

QUARTZ

Big Think