The nature of time in reality

What is it about?

In this article we explore time within the framework of relativity, delving into the dichotomy between "presentism" and "eternalism. We address the fundamental question "what really exists in our reality" and use our experience with this question when it comes to quantum mechanics for the case of relativity. In our exploration, we introduce the concept of a personal block universe, in which each individual's reality forms a unique four-dimensional structure encompassing past, present and potential future experiences. This perspective does not reject the existence of temporal change in overall reality, and offers a solution to the paradox of a global Block universe that seemed to rule out temporal evolution. Our analysis sheds light on the dynamic nature of personal realities within the broader framework of spacetime.

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Why is it important?

We identify the cause of the ‘frozen block universe’ paradox seen by many physicists in connection with the theory of relativity. Since it is assumed that it follows from the theory of relativity that ‘what exists’ is the spacetime continuum and its content, and not the three-dimensional space in which a time marks the separation between ‘past’ and ‘future’ that we call ‘present’ and its content, ‘change’ is an illusion that cannot possibly take place in the physical world, where past, present and future simply ‘are’, and thus there is no ‘becoming’. The experience of ‘time’ and ‘change’ is placed by those physicists in the psychological world of human, we feel change, but in physical reality there is only ‘being’, which contains past, present and future. Indeed, by taking the theory of relativity seriously, one irrevocably arrives at such a ‘block universe interpretation’. Yet something was overlooked, and that which was overlooked we identify in this article. In a sense, we could identify this well-hidden overlooked step within the standard analysis by taking relativity theory even more seriously than those who arrive at the block universe interpretation do. Namely, it is only each personal observer who can decide on a ‘personal block universe’ in this way, which makes the universe of all observers a collection of these personal block universes, because the different personal block universes do not coincide, e.g. one's own body is ‘not contained’ in one's own personal block universe, unlike the bodies of other observers. As a consequence of correcting this overlooked reasoning step, it follows from the theory of relativity that the entire universe suddenly becomes a place where change is not only possible again, but even present and frequent in an obvious way, and the time we experience is indeed the parameter that describes this change. Everyone has a past, present and future in his or her personal block universe, it is only the past, present and future of the others and of all things different from one’s own body that do not exist in that own block universe. It is an application of the very strict methodological way of analyzing reality and perception and their relationship that we learned from quantum mechanics that brought us to the track of this overlooked step in the traditional from relativity theory itself way of analyzing spacetime that leads to this frozen reality paradox.