Monday, October 10, 2011

About time: Countdown to the theory of everything - New Scientist - New Scientist

About time: Countdown to the theory of everything: Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the Centre for Theoretical Physics in Marseilles, France, has rewritten the rules of quantum mechanics so that they make no reference to time (New Scientist, 19 January 2008, p 26).

"For me, the solution to the problem is that at the fundamental level of nature there is no time at all," Rovelli says. In his view, quantum mechanics does not have to describe how physical systems evolve in time but only how they evolve relative to other systems, such as observers or measuring devices. "Physics is not about 'how does the moon move through the sky in time?' but rather 'how does the moon move in the sky with respect to the sun?'," he says. "Time is in our mind, not in the basic physical reality."

No comments:

Post a Comment