The passage of time is something we all experience, as it takes us from one moment to the next. But could it all just be an illusion?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

We experience time very consistently: something that flows only forward, never backward, and always at the same rate, taking us from one moment to the next.

While this may be our experience, Einstein taught us that time is not an absolute entity, but only exists relative to the observer and their motion through space as well.

Some, from a philosophical point of view, make the seemingly outlandish claim that time is only a persistent illusion. Can physics justify that, or are we stuck with accepting that time is real?

We’ve all heard the philosophical question, ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ Some people think time is an illusion, a construct of human minds and experience. If that’s true, then if there were no sentient beings around to experience it, does time exist?