#time

#time

Clocks, like live animals, are dangerous things to put onstage, because they so easily draw your eye away from the performers. In Jacob Perkins's The Dinosaurs, for instance, I caught myself glancing up at the circular plastic one at the left of the stage, frozen at about 15 minutes past the hour. The immobile hands are surely a design choice, one that layers a sense of unreality over the otherwise hyperreal rec room (designed by the nearly ubiquitous firm dots) where The Dinosaurs's characters gather.

The way most people think about time is wrong. The notion that we share a 'common time' moving in a single direction is a useful illusion but, as physicists have understood since the discoveries of Albert Einstein, it doesn't comport with our understanding of the Universe. However, as the Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli argues in this short documentary from Quanta Magazine, this doesn't mean we should abandon the concept of time altogether.

From Einstein's spacetime theory to the brain's internal clock, they examine whether time is an external property of the universe or a mental construct. By connecting physics and neuroscience, they unpack the idea that how we experience time may differ entirely from how it actually works. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they're on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking.

"Time is a thief." I learned this phrase in elementary school. It was regularly uttered by an administrator who, on the first day of school, would wistfully greet the student body, marveling at how much each child had grown over the summer. As a 10-year-old kid, I didn't put much stock into the musings of a middle-aged vice principal. Decades later, however, I better understand and appreciate the sentiment of her words.

"Essentially, time itself does not have the ability to heal, but the other things that come with it, like changes and experiences, can help with it."

The idea of speeding up Earth's rotation to halve a day presents challenges like redefining time and can lead to insights into physics and potential innovations.

Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing.

The ocean reveals a different way of being, where time is found in the movement of clouds, the ebb and flow of tides, and the surf's pulse.

"I see clearly how it ends / I see the moon rise as the sun descends," they sing during opener "Sinatra Drive Breakdown."