Kurt Gödel found a solution to Einstein's equations that depicted a rotating universe, where all the space-time rotates. This universe would have closed timeline curves, that is, time travel would be possible.
Gödel presented this result in a conference. John Wheeler was there and wrote that in such a universe you could live your life over and over again. In his book on Gödel, Palle Yourgrau says that Wheeler misunderstood Gödel (!).
What Gödel was trying to show was that if time travel is possible, then time, as a subjective experience, can't exist, it's just an illusion. It's not that you repeat your life. Yourgrau says that such closed timelike curves are like circles: points in a circle aren't moving around forever. They just stay there.
Gödel was a platonic mathematician, so if in one possible universe the subjective passing of time is an illusion, then the concept itself is not reliable, not something that universally exists, just an artifact, an illusion just convenient for our universe.
Yourgrau says that these results by Gödel regarding the illusory nature of time haven't been widely accepted.
(More details in "A World Without Time", by Palle Yourgrau). #physics #philosophy
David Quintero
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2024-12-22 14:33:02 UTC
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"content": "Kurt Gödel found a solution to Einstein's equations that depicted a rotating universe, where all the space-time rotates. This universe would have closed timeline curves, that is, time travel would be possible.\n\nGödel presented this result in a conference. John Wheeler was there and wrote that in such a universe you could live your life over and over again. In his book on Gödel, Palle Yourgrau says that Wheeler misunderstood Gödel (!).\n\nWhat Gödel was trying to show was that if time travel is possible, then time, as a subjective experience, can't exist, it's just an illusion. It's not that you repeat your life. Yourgrau says that such closed timelike curves are like circles: points in a circle aren't moving around forever. They just stay there.\n\nGödel was a platonic mathematician, so if in one possible universe the subjective passing of time is an illusion, then the concept itself is not reliable, not something that universally exists, just an artifact, an illusion just convenient for our universe.\n\nYourgrau says that these results by Gödel regarding the illusory nature of time haven't been widely accepted.\n\n(More details in \"A World Without Time\", by Palle Yourgrau). #physics #philosophy",
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