But it’s not a good notion for thinking at nature at a fundamental level That’s the point. Of course, it keeps existing in our daily life, right? We have 20 minutes, or whatever, to talk, and this is not going to change. Would that be correct?ĬARLO ROVELLI: Yes, that would be correct. But you say that as a concept in physics, time, like that little t we use in calculating rate, times time, equals distance, really does not exist. We, in the course of our daily lives, think time exists. It’s your belief, as a physicist trying to understand the universe from a quantum point of view, that time, as we normally think about it, is not a useful concept. IRA FLATOW: Let me take a stab at some of the things here and see if I’m getting this right. IRA FLATOW: I really enjoyed reading this, because it just made my hair hurt in a good way.

And I’ll tell you, welcome back to Science Friday, Carlo.ĬARLO ROVELLI: Thank you very much, Ira. Carlo Rovelli is a physicist and author of numerous books, including his most recent, The Order of Time. He’s working on a way to quantify gravity, which time doesn’t need to exist. But my next guest thinks about time even differently than that. Or maybe you’ve come around to Einstein’s view of time, as a substance in which we are immersed.

How do you think about time? Well, if you’re like most people, you experience it as Newton described it as something that passes independent of other events, something that’s the same for everyone.

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli