But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”5
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
Time allows change to take place and the very evolution of the universe is what requires some conception of time. Mathematically can we write down a universe that doesn't have time? Sure. Do we think that would be realised in the larger reality that is out there? None of us take that possibility seriously.
Time is just quantified eternity.
If time has no beginning and no end, everything is happening, will happen, has happened, at the same moment. All eternity in a single moment.
Time is a person-made concept.
There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.
The simplest way out of the puzzle of time travel is to say that it can't be done. That's very likely the right answer. However, we don't know for sure.
Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.
Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.
Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.
I think the idea of time travel is very seductive.
Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.
Time has only a relative existence.
Time travel, by its very nature, was invented in all periods of history simultaneously.
I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.
It's entirely possible that the notion of what is the past, what is the present and what is the future, could change.
The phrase I like to use to describe my sense of time-a play on comparative literature - is comparative time.
I've come to think that the universe is a four-dimensional site in which nothing is changing and nothing is moving. The only thing that is moving along the time axis is our consciousness. The past is still there, the future has always been here. Every moment that has existed or will ever exist is all part of this giant hyper-moment of space-time.
Time doesn't necessarily happen in chronological order.
Time itself is talked about as something that is unusual, that there could be a parallel time.
Once upon a time there was no Time.
There was no 'before' the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.
I confess, I do not believe in time.
And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe.
