From Ron Billard, Dorking, Surrey, UK
Last year’s article “The dark energy illusion” promised a new concept of time, while this year’s article “The illusion of time” promised a convincing update. However, what we are actually getting is a strange mix of time being thought of as a dimension, time flowing and time being an illusion (31 January, p 28).
The dimensions we are used to are fixed and don’t move – rather, things move along them. Why should the dimension of time be different, apart from the fact that we, and everything else, seem able to move in only one direction, towards the future? We have ever more accurate clocks that mark time in regular, ever tinier gradations. But there is nothing to show that time is moving.
Motion is measured by a change of position over time. Where is the foundation for measuring the motion of time? Is the past still there, in its own part of the time dimension? Or does the past get wiped out as we travel forwards towards the future? There are lots of questions, but the answers seem a long time coming.
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