Guido Tonelli Publishes July 28 Book on Time, Arguing Physics Can Make It Meaningless
Updated
Updated · Gizmodo · Aug 9
Guido Tonelli Publishes July 28 Book on Time, Arguing Physics Can Make It Meaningless
1 articles · Updated · Gizmodo · Aug 9
Summary
Published in English on July 28, Guido Tonelli’s “Time: The Dream of Killing Chronos” examines how modern physics has upended the old idea of time as universal and absolute.
Tonelli argues relativity and quantum theory show time can bend, diverge between observers, and even lose meaning in extreme settings such as black holes.
At the microscopic level, he says simple particle processes can run forward or backward in time-symmetric ways, while entropy locks macroscopic life into a one-way arrow of time.
Tonelli also links time to human perception, saying the brain’s sense of sequence can stretch or compress under fear, stress, or pleasure even as physical time remains external.
Drawing on his Higgs boson work, he says physicists already infer lifetimes as short as 10^-23 seconds and may eventually reach theories where time is not fundamental at all.