Since Albert Einstein, scientists have understood that, while our experience of time can feel like an unbending arrow forward, physics paints a much more complex picture. And, as this interview with Jeff Tollaksen, professor of physics at Chapman University in California, shows, the results of recent quantum experiments have led some physicists to once again entirely reconsider how we conceive of time. In a conversation with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for his interview series Closer to Truth, Tollaksen details how several recent mind-bending quantum particle experiments have blurred the line between past, present and future. Further, he argues, these experiments, which factor in ‘the relevance of the future to the present’, may demand a radical rethinking of quantum experimentation itself.
Video by Closer to Truth
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
video
Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes