Tag Archives: relativity

Physics has long been confused about the concept of ‘now’. New insights show that it is fundamental.

A sense of Now is the universal human experience. Yet modern physics cannot handle the concept of the present moment. Indeed relativity—our great theory of space and time—insisted on embedding it within a time dimension and then crossbreeding this dimension with three space dimensions to make spacetime. This was a blunder. It blocks progress. Physics […]

This universal principle created all space and matter from the beginning of time. Today, it’s still creating strange phenomena around the world.

Emergence is the source of all the laws of physics. Strange spots called fairy circles illustrate the way emergence brings new fundamental properties into the world, including space and matter. There are millions of them. Bare patches in grasslands, remarkably well-defined, regular in shape and spacing, and ordered in a roughly-hexagonal array over long distances, […]

Could the Universe Have Only Two Dimensions?

It’s strange but true: Physics is now studying the universe as if it is a two-dimensional hologram. How did this come to be? And what does it mean? The 3D/2D duality is known as the holographic principle. Two decades ago American theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind described it this way: ‘In a certain sense the world […]

What’s Wrong with Relativity?

There is no absolute frame of reference. It’s called the Principle of Relativity. Problem is: The principle is wrong. How so? Let’s take a closer look at what it is. Italian physicist Galileo Galilei had an idea. He said an experiment that’s done inside a smoothly moving ship can’t tell you that it’s moving. In […]

What’s In a Metric? More Than You Might Think

For more than a hundred years a metric has been seen as a good thing. Turns out it’s not; indeed it’s definitely bad.  First, what’s a metric? That gets complicated; it’s an assumed property of space. It’s like a ruler science uses to make measurements of many kinds, like lengths of lines (both straight and […]

The Beginning of Time

When did time begin? Science now has an answer. How did time begin? For millennia this was a subject for speculation, little of it based on science. But there is now a philosophic answer. Space came first. Time began soon after space. Very soon. Here’s how. From recent measurements we know that time began 13,799,000,000 […]

The Flow of Time

Does time flow? It is a fundamental question. It has confounded physics for hundreds of years. It still does. We sense the flow of time.  Today many physicists say this is an illusion. I say they don’t understand. Physics at the very largest and the very smallest scales leads to a simple way to make […]