Is "Time Does Not Exist" True? Rovelli's Erased Time and the Unvanished "Now"

Fading Time ── Rovelli's Three Arguments

"Time does not exist."

A book with such a provocative title became a global bestseller. The author is Carlo Rovelli. He is a genuine theoretical physicist who leads loop quantum gravity theory.

In the first half of the book, Rovelli peels away our image of time, layer by layer.

Firstly, time flows at different rates depending on location. The progression of time differs between mountaintops and flat ground, which can be measured with modern precision clocks. There is no absolute time that flows uniformly everywhere in the universe.

Secondly, there is no universal "present" that applies to the entire universe. It is physically impossible to share the "present" with someone on a distant star. "The present" is a local concept that is only valid in our immediate vicinity.

Third, there is no direction of time in the fundamental equations. The basic laws of physics do not distinguish between past and future. The "arrow of time" arises not from the fundamental laws, but from statistical considerations of increasing entropy.

And thus, the time variable t vanishes from the deepest description of the world. This is what it means to say "time does not exist."

Time didn't disappear, it moved.

However, this book has a second half.

In the final section, Rovelli, who has erased time from physics, confronts the opposite question: if time does not exist, why do we experience it so vividly?

Rovelli's answer lies in memory and prediction. The brain holds traces of the past and anticipates the future. "Time" emerges from this process—time arises not on the side of the universe, but on our side, the side of the observer.

A careful reader will notice here.

This is not the elimination of time. It is the relocation of time.

Time, expelled from the fundamental equations of the universe, did not disappear but relocated to another place called the "structure of experience." Rovelli has not yet delved into the internal structure of that new residence—what form the "now" takes, where memory and prediction overlap.

The overlap of "now" and the auxiliary axis of imaginary time

Observing that "now" reveals three phases coexisting.

What is happening now is still superimposed on what has just passed (the work of memory), and what is to come is already encroaching (the work of anticipation). A melody is heard as a melody because of this overlap. If there were only one note at each moment, what would be heard would be a continuous series of isolated points, not a melody.

The important point is that this coexistence of phases cannot be positioned on the time axis t. On the t-axis, past, present, and future are scattered in separate locations. The situation where they overlap in "a single now" does not arise no matter how finely the chronological order of t is carved.

Murashu’s fifth paper, “Imaginary Time,” draws a conclusion from this. To a non-closed description, one adds only the minimum necessary complementary axis. A complete description of time is given as the composition of the real time axis t and the imaginary time axis it, which is orthogonal to it: T = t + it.

The time t that Rovelli removed from physics and the layered structure of "now" that remained on the side of experience can be understood not as contradictions, but as separate components of a two-dimensional temporal structure.

The End of the Assumption of a Single Line

Let's answer the initial question.

"One-dimensional time flowing uniformly everywhere in the universe" does not exist. This is in line with Rovelli's view and is the current state of modern physics.

But that is not the end of speaking about time. If one-dimensional time t was not the fundamental description of the world, then we would need a new vocabulary to describe the time we are actually living in—time that has thickness, expands and contracts, and where phases overlap.

What "Time Does Not Exist" destroyed was not time itself.

The idea that time is a line is a simplified, universally shared human assumption. If you want to know more, please do.

↓Yuma Murakami's Fifth Paper "Imaginary Time - Non-closure of Description and the Principle of Minimal Extension" is here↓

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