Is time real, or does it emerge from something deeper?
Physics keeps time at a distance: it appears essential to experience but optional in the deepest equations.
OPEN QUESTIONS
Explorations
Short, researched explorations of questions worth staying with. Each one sets out the evidence, the competing views and what remains unknown. Written by the Observe Reality editors.
Could the universe be a cycle?
Some cosmologists propose the universe repeats or rebounds instead of beginning once at the Big Bang.
What is a thought experiment, and why do they work?
Imagined scenarios have changed physics and philosophy without a single measurement being taken.
Is the present a place, or a perspective?
What feels like a single instant called now may really be a short window built by the brain.