From Ian Roselman, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, UK
Not long ago, I posed the following question to an online seminar: “The age of the universe is stated as 13.8 billion years, but in whose frame of reference is this true(8 March, p 26)?”
It wasn’t selected for discussion, but I know the standard answer is that time passes at the same rate on the largest scale of the universe. But does it, really? I have always thought this answer, based on the cosmological principle, too convenient, especially when stated in terms that it must be so or else we couldn’t solve the equations of general relativity. I, for one, am hoping that David Wiltshire’s timescape idea – which posits that time passes differently in parts of the universe, potentially resolving the problems of dark energy and the Hubble tension – will be vindicated.
