Real time

The idea that nature consists fundamentally of atoms with immutable properties moving through unchanging space, guided by timeless laws, underlies a metaphysical view in which time is absent or diminished. This view has been the basis for centuries of progress in science, but its usefulness for fundamental physics and cosmology has come to an end due to its inability to answer key questions such as what chose the laws of nature or why the universe is so asymmetric in time. Some people have confused the reliance on timeless laws with science itself, but this is wrong.

A new scientific world view is emerging based on the principles that time is real, laws evolve and irreversibility is fundamental. It is already clear this view has the capacity to explain – in ways that are testable by experiment – basic facts about our universe that otherwise appear to be inexplicable.

-- Lee Smolin