Page 220 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Darwin’s Dilemma: The Soul

travel very fast, so you head off in a rocket, close to the speed of
light and come back again. Because you’ve travelled very fast, your
clocks will have run more slowly and so, if you’ve been away for one
year according to your clock, maybe ten years have gone by on
Earth. So, in essence you’ve travelled nine years into the future.
Another way to travel to the future is to orbit a massive star. If you
do it for a year, again, you may come back to find again that ten
years have elapsed on Earth. So either way, time travel to the future
is possible. 136
Al-Khalili explains the concept of time:
This would imply that the past, present and future all exist. There is
no present moment to distinguish past from future. All times co-ex-
ist, time just is. And so the future is already out there. The only way
to understand this was to link the three dimensions of space with the
one dimension of time to what became known as four-dimensional
space/time. 137
The passage of time is merely a sensation created for us. Since
we perceive it in this way, we think that what we do takes place
within a temporal process. The fact is that we always live in the
present “moment.” The concept of passing time is illusory.
Mathematical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of
Oxford has won countless awards for his work on perception. He
gave this reply to a question by the host on a radio program:

Physicist: We have this subjective feeling, that time goes by. But
physicists would argue this is just an illusion.

Roger Penrose: Yes. I think physicists would agree that the feeling of
time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has
something to do with our perceptions. 138
The way that such a seemingly objective factor operates as
a perception in our minds and how all times exist within one
single time are without doubt beyond our comprehension.

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