Do your past, present and future all exist right now? Are you reading this blog, being born, and lying on your deathbed at this very moment? Surprisingly, the answer could be yes. But how can that be?

How does time work?

Imagine the Universe like movie. Each frame shows everything that’s happening in the universe in a single moment. Each new frame is a new moment, where all kinds of things occur everywhere. People are born and die, and our universe-movie keeps rolling. Each frame keeps being replaced by the next. To us, only the moment we’re in right now is real. The past is far behind us, the future doesn’t exist.

But what if time is something else? What if the universe-movie has already finished running, but we’re only watching it in real time. This gives us a block of time that contains the whole history of the universe. All moments that have ever existed or will ever exist. But in this block, in this stack of moments, the past, the present and the future are equally real and exist at the same time.

How can the past and future be real right now? The problem is that according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, they have to be. Heavily simplified, relativity says that time and space are not separated, but one connected spacetime. When you move through space, you are also moving through the block of time. This means time passes differently for different people, depending on how they move through space relative to each other. And this also means that what someone perceives as ‘now’ is a frame of the movie that will depend on how fast they are moving. So what you think is ‘now’ is really only your ‘now’. There are many different ‘nows’ in the universe and all of them are equally real. This also means there is no universal past or future.

So we have multiple different ‘nows’, so which one is correct? Well, that’s the problem. Relativity is based on one powerful principle – cosmic democracy; the fact that the point of view of all observers in the universe is equally valid. All those ‘nows’ must be equally real. But if this is the case, your past, present and your future all must exist at the same time, right now. Because for the different beings, they all happen in their present. This means that the distinction between the past, the present and the future is an illusion. The universe is not a bunch of things evolving through time, like in a movie – but a static block in which the past, the present and the future all coexist and are real.

This means that the universe never was and never will be, it simply is. Everything that will ever happen is already written and decided. If all times coexist and are equally real, then the future has to be already written. But that’s not how you experience things. It feels like you can mold your future with your decisions. It really feels like you’re free to choose to stop reading this blog. But if the future is set in stone, you can’t decide anything. So, are your choices an illusion? Maybe. Maybe your free will is a mirage. And maybe your failed relationship was already predetermined at the Big Bang. So don’t take it easy on yourself.

Penned By:

Rtr. Aditha Abeynayake

Editorial Committee Member 23.24