Quotes About Time

There is no preferred direction of time without heat.

For a hypothetically supersensible being, there would be no "flowing" of time: the universe would be a single block of past, present, and future.

If LISA is launched, it should be able to see not only the gravitational waves produced by stars and black holes but also the diffuse background of primordial gravitational waves generated at a time close to the Big Bang. These waves should tell us about the quantum bounce. In the subtle irregularities of space, we should be able to find traces of events that took place fourteen billion years ago, at the origin of our universe, and confirm our deductions on the nature of space and time.

Let's begin with a simple fact: time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level.

Aristotle is the first we are aware of to have asked himself the question "What is time?," and he came to the following conclusion: time is the measurement of change.

Every cubic centimeter of space, and every second that passes, is the result of this dancing foam of extremely small quanta.

Hold on tight, because we are about to take off. "NOW" MEANS NOTHING What is happening "now" in a distant place? Imagine, for example, that your sister has gone to Proxima b, the recently discovered planet that orbits a star at approximately four light-years' distance from us. What is your sister doing now on Proxima b? The only correct answer is that the question makes no sense. It is like asking "What is here, in Beijing?" when we are in Venice.

Time passes more slowly for the one who keeps moving.

Music can occur only in time, but if we are always in the present moment, how is it possible to hear it? It is possible, Augustine observes, because our consciousness is based on memory and on anticipation.

There is no "truer" time; there are two times and they change relative to each other. Neither is truer than the other. But there are not just two times. Times are legion: a different one for every point in space. There is not one single time; there is a vast multitude of them.

What causes us to suffer is not in the past or the future: it is here, now, in our memory, in our expectations. We long for timelessness, we endure the passing of time: we suffer time. Time is suffering.

Ten years before understanding that time is slowed down by mass,21 Einstein had realized that it was slowed down by speed.22 The consequence of this discovery for our basic intuitive perception of time is the most devastating of all.

Proper time" depends not only on where you are and your degree of proximity to masses; it depends also on the speed at which you move. It's a strange enough fact in itself, but its consequences are extraordinary. Hold on tight, because we are about to take

We are processes, events, composite and limited in space and time. But if we are not an individual entity, what is it that founds our identity and its unity?

The idea that a well-defined now exists throughout the universe is an illusion, an illegitimate extrapolation of our own experience.

But there is a third ingredient in the foundation of our identity, and it is probably the essential one—it is the reason this delicate discussion is taking place in a book about time: memory.

the spatiotemporal entity of Einstein.

If the present has no meaning, then what "exists" in the universe? Is not what "exists" precisely what is here "in the present"? The whole idea that the universe exists now in a certain configuration and changes together with the passage of time simply doesn't stack up anymore.

Augustine's exposition of the idea is quite beautiful. It is based on our experience of music. When we listen to a hymn, the meaning of a sound is given by the ones that come before and after it. Music can occur only in time, but if we are always in the present moment, how is it possible to hear it? It is possible, Augustine observes, because our consciousness is based on memory and on anticipation.

And hence this is what time is: it is entirely in the present, in our minds, as memory and as anticipation.

Se non si perde tempo non si arriva da nessuna parte, cosa che i genitori degli adolescenti purtroppo dimenticano spesso.

The key fact that Einstein understood is that this quarter of an hour is inevitable: there is no way of reducing it. It is woven into the texture of the events of space and of time: we cannot abbreviate it, any more than we can send a letter to the past.

It is with respect to that physical system to which we belong—due to the peculiar way in which it interacts with the rest of the world, thanks to the fact that it allows traces and because we, as physical entities, consist of memory and anticipation—that the perspective of time opens up for us, like our small, lit clearing.

the incessant happening that wearies the world is not ordered along a time line, is not measured by a gigantic ticktocking. It does not even form a four-dimensional geometry. It is a boundless and disorderly network of quantum events. The world is more like Naples than Singapore.