Scientists have been exploring the idea that time might not be as real as we think—it could just be something our brains invented to make sense of the world. The way we measure time, like seconds, minutes, and hours, is based on how Earth moves around the sun, but that’s just a human-made system. Some physicists argue that in the grand scheme of the universe, past, present, and future all exist at the same time, and what we experience as "now" is just our perspective. This idea comes from theories like Einstein’s relativity, where time can stretch or shrink depending on speed or gravity. Without humans to track it, "time" might not even exist in the way we understand it—it’s more like a big, flexible thing. It's super weird to think about, but it makes you wonder: what is real, anyway? Credit: Interstellar / Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Animation is created by Bright Side. #brightside ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Listen to Bright Side on: Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brightside/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official/ Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Snapchat - https://www.snapchat.com/p/c6a1e38a-bff1-4a40-9731-2c8234ccb19f/1866144599336960 Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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00:00Time is nothing but a magician's trick. Or is it? We're used to time zipping along
00:06like a car, always pointing into the future. It creates cause and effect, lining events
00:11up one after another, like dominoes. Sometimes it stretches between moments, getting so slow
00:17it might even want to stop. And it's got a spotlight on right now because that's
00:22the only moment that truly matters. But there's a new theory that it might not exist at all.
00:29We usually think of space as having three dimensions, up and down, left and right, forward
00:38and back. And everyone thought that time was a separate thing, just a universal clock ticking
00:43away in the background, and it's the same for everyone. But then Einstein came forward.
00:49He decided to surprise everyone back in 1905 when he introduced his special theory of relativity.
00:56It said that time is another dimension, just like the others, and they're all tied together
01:01in one big space-time. Based on this, it turned out that time can change depending on the
01:07speed at which you move. Now imagine that we take two twins. Twin A stays on Earth.
01:14Twin B takes a journey into space on a spaceship, moving at a speed close to the speed of light.
01:20Let's say 90% of that speed. Twin B travels to a distant star and then returns to Earth.
01:27For Twin B, it feels like the journey only took a few years. But when they come back
01:31to Earth, it turns out that Twin A has aged significantly more. They find out that 20,
01:3730, or even more years have passed on Earth. That's all because of the phenomenon called
01:43time dilation. It happens when we're reaching speeds close to the speed of light, causing
01:48time to slow down for the traveler relative to someone who stays in one place.
01:55Ten years later, Einstein proposed his theory of general relativity. That's when we learned
02:00that time changes not only based on your speed, but also based on gravity. Back in the day,
02:06Newton thought that gravity was some magical force that makes objects attract each other.
02:11However, Einstein proposed that this isn't a force, but more like an after-effect. Picture
02:17the space as some huge cloth. When you throw a heavy ball on a cloth, it curves. Now, if
02:23you throw some small balls around it, they will naturally approach the heavy ball.
02:30At the same time, massive objects like stars and planets cause space-time to curve around
02:35them. When there's something super-heavy in space-time, it curves the matter around
02:40it. This curvature tells objects how to move. And this is what we call gravity.
02:46This idea created all sorts of cool predictions that later turned out to be true. Bending
02:51of light by gravity, black holes, and time dilation around these black holes, just like
02:56in Interstellar. This theory revolutionized our view on everything, but we might be on
03:02the verge of another revolution.
03:07Some philosophers have a crazy claim. They say that the things we believe about time
03:12are all just ideas in our heads, not facts of the physical world. This idea, which breaks
03:18the traditional view of time, is called the Bloch universe. It's backed up by Einstein's
03:24theory of relativity, but extends it and makes it more complicated. Imagine the universe
03:29as a huge sandwich. This sandwich contains every moment of time, past, present, and future,
03:36all at once. Each layer or slice of the sandwich represents a different moment in time. And
03:42all these layers exist simultaneously, rather than one after the other. In this model of
03:47our world, the past, present, and future are all equal. Unlike our everyday experience,
03:53where the past is gone, the future hasn't happened yet, and only the present is real,
03:58the Bloch universe says that every point in time is just as real as every other point.
04:04Imagine, your birth, this moment right now, and what you'll be doing in 10 years from
04:09now all exist together in this Bloch. It also says there's not really a flow of time. We're
04:16used to time flowing from one moment to the next, even with Einstein's theory. But in
04:21the Bloch universe, the feeling of time moving is more about how we experience and remember
04:26events than about how time itself works. It's like reading a magical book. All the pages
04:32exist at once, but you can only experience the story page by page.
04:36Now, this implies some scary things, like destiny, and whether free will actually exists.
04:45If everything is already laid out, does what we do matter? For example,
04:50you clicking on this video was already predetermined in the Bloch universe. Every
04:55choice you've ever made was an illusion. You're just a program following a code,
04:59but with an ability to understand its consequences. This would explain why we
05:04order junk food at midnight, knowing that it's a bad idea that we're going to regret.
05:09But some scientists argue that time's flow and direction are as real as it gets,
05:14because cause and effect still exist. If your birth, current moment, and you in the future
05:20with gray hair all existed at the same time, you'd be able to visit your past self at any
05:26moment and already knew what your future self is like. So this whole debate might just be about
05:32how we piece together our stories of the past, not proof that the future isn't waiting to unfold.
05:38There's also a never-ending battle between general relativity and quantum mechanics,
05:45which only adds spice to the debate. On one hand, general relativity plays with time like
05:51it's a stretchy Play-Doh. The flow of time can stretch or compress depending on the speed or
05:57gravity. On the other hand, in quantum mechanics, time isn't something that can be manipulated or
06:03changed. It's a constant stage upon which the particles and forces of the universe perform.
06:09These two fields have been fighting for a long time now, and scientists are struggling to unite
06:15them in one cohesive theory of everything. Although there are some candidates who try
06:20to merge them in a logical way, like string theory. String theory sounds scary, but it's
06:25simply saying that the entire universe, with all its particles and atoms, is made up of ultra-tiny
06:32vibrating strings. Each string can vibrate in separate ways, like the strings on a guitar,
06:37and in many dimensions. The way these strings vibrate determines what type of particle they
06:43will be, like an electron or a quark. Another idea, called loop quantum gravity,
06:49says that space and time are made of tiny loops. Whether it's strings or loops, unfortunately,
06:58they would be so tiny that we simply don't have strong enough equipment to check them out yet. So,
07:04until we test these theories, they can't be proven. What's interesting is that both ideas
07:09don't really need time to explain how the universe works. We think of things like tables and chairs
07:15as real, even though physics doesn't describe them directly. We say they emerge from the tiny
07:21particles that make up the universe. But with time, we're not sure how it would emerge from
07:26something else. But no matter what the answer is, you're going to be okay. If it turns out that it
07:32doesn't really exist, then it could make everything feel pointless. But think about this. We still
07:38lead our lives, and we still experience what feels like causation and make sense of everything. It
07:44still feels like it was our choice to order that junk food at midnight. So, does that being
07:50predetermined really matter? In any case, we've been wrong about plenty of things we thought were
07:56set in stone. Right now, there's a big split between the block universe and our traditional
08:00theories. But we'll learn the truth over time. That's it for today! So, hey, if you pacified
08:10your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends! Or, if you want more,
08:15just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!