Time feels fundamental, yet physics increasingly suggests it may not be a basic ingredient of reality. Different theories treat time in radically different ways. In Einstein’s general relativity, time is fused with space into a flexible four-dimensional spacetime that bends with gravity, causing effects like time dilation. Past, present, and future all coexist, much like all pages of a book laid out at once. Quantum mechanics, however, treats time as an external background parameter: we can measure a particle’s position or energy, but not “when” it exists. This clash creates the “problem of time” when trying to describe the entire universe with one theory.

When physicists attempt such a unified description, the equations suggest the universe as a whole is timeless and unchanging. So why do we experience change? In 1983, Don Page and William Wootters proposed that time is emergent and relational. The universe can be seen as a single quantum state split into a system and a clock, linked by entanglement. The universe itself does not evolve, but observers perceive change by comparing the system to the clock time flows only through relationships and events.

Recent studies, including work in 2024, show this idea holds even for large, classical systems. Timekeeping turns out to be a physical process that consumes energy and produces entropy. Measuring time is especially costly: extracting information from a clock generates far more entropy than the clock’s internal ticking. This links the arrow of time to irreversible interactions and records of events, not an external flow.

Some scientists even suggest black holes could act as ultimate clocks, using their energy and isolation to set time for the universe.

oh damn he is from a neighbouring country of mine,

anti-pedophillia is very rare in non-western nations