The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics

Who knows what experiences are possible in the oases of richly structured Nows strung out along the trade routes that cross the deserts of Platonia? The plurality of experience is remarkable and suggestive. In any instant, we are aware of many things at once. Through memories we are, as it were, present simultaneously in many different Nows in Platonia. Richness of structure permits this. One grand structure contains substructures that are ‘pictures’ – simplified representations that capture the essential features – of other structures. Our memories are pictures of other Nows within this Now, rather like snapshots in an album. Each Now is separate and a world unto itself, but the richly structured Nows ‘know’ about one another because they literally contain one another in certain essential respects. As consciousness surveys many things at once in one Now, it is simultaneously present, at least in part, in other Nows. This awareness of many things in one could well exist in a much more pronounced form in other places in Platonia.

Figure 6 The conjectured filamentary distribution of mist in Platonia. The instant you experience now is marked NOW. To its left lie Nows of which you have memories in NOW. There is no bifurcation in this direction, matching our conviction that we have a unique past. In the other direction there is a branching into different alternative ‘futures’ of NOW. In all of them, you think you have advanced into the future by the same amount from NOW. These different filaments are ‘parallel worlds’ that seem to have a common past, to which NOW belongs. Note that the filaments have a finite width, unlike a Newtonian string of successive instants. All around NOW, along the filament and to either side of it, are other Nows with slightly different versions of yourself. All such Nows are ‘other worlds’ in which there exist somewhat different but still recognizable versions of yourself. In other filaments are worlds you would not recognize at all.

The picture of ourselves dividing into parallel Nows may be unsettling, but the phenomenon itself is familiar. We are used to being in different Nows and being slightly different in all of them – that is simply the effect of time as it is usually conceived. The account of Lucy’s leaps emphasized that the differences in ourselves between Nows are far greater than we realize within consciousness. Huge numbers of microscopically different Nows could give identical conscious experience. As we shall see, quantum mechanics forces us to consider Nows everywhere, not just those on one path. It unsettles by division, seeming to threaten dissolution and personal integrity. But it simultaneously binds us into the far mightier whole of everything that can be, doing so much more decisively than any Newtonian scheme can do. For the Nows that are likely to be experienced are the ones that are most sensitive to the whole of Platonia.

I think this is sufficient introduction. I could go on to talk about free will, the future, our place in the universe, religion, and so on. If the theory is correct, it must change the way we think about these things. However, without some real understanding of the arguments for a timeless universe, I feel further discussion would lack a solid basis. I therefore postpone these issues to later in the book, especially the epilogue. My aim so far has been to outline the scheme and to show that it is truly timeless and at least logically possible.

PART 2

The Invisible Framework and the Ultimate Arena

Newton introduced two ‘great invisibles’ as the arena of physics: absolute space and time. In Part 2 we shall see why they have appeared for so long to be better suited to acting as the frame of the world than Platonia. It is all to do with an issue that physicists and philosophers have been arguing about for centuries: is motion absolute or relative? Newton’s position has seemed to be so strong that many people still believe it cannot be overthrown. But it can. The demonstration of the relatively simple solution in Newtonian physics will prepare us for the almost miraculous way in which things work out in Einstein’s theory (Part 3). They give the strongest suggestion that quantum cosmology – and hence our universe – is timeless. That we come to in Parts 4 and 5. Chapter 4 is a brief historical introduction, and sets the scene for the remainder of Part 2 – and for much of the rest of the book.

CHAPTER 4

Alternative Frameworks

ABSOLUTE OR RELATIVE MOTION?