• Question: do you think time is fictional?

    Asked by imadinosinetriphosphate to Peter, Mark, Katharine, Jony, Ben on 17 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Deep question!

      I don’t think it’s fictional, as it’s an incredibly useful concept that comes up again and again.

      But it’s definitely not “real” in the same was as electrons or sausages are.

      So I’d say non-fiction, but abstract.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Phew, Glad someone else answered that one, Thanks Jony 🙂

    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      well it’s as real as anything else. am i real? are you real? we often have discussions about existentialism over coffee. Karl Popper is the philosopher to read about that one.
      certainly the experience of time is subjective. the photons in the micorwave background have been travelling 13 billion years and as far as they are concerned now is the exact same moment that they were created.
      so the concept is malleable

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Whether it’s real or not, I don’t have enough of the stuff! 🙂

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Time is a dimension just like up-down, left-right and back-forward are the three space dimensions. Together they form space-time which is the 4 dimensions that the Universe works in. Space-time is a crucial part of our understanding of the Universe at the very largest and smallest scales; cosmology and particle physics.

      In the sense of physics time is a real dimension.

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