Mind-bending new quantum experiments are blurring past, present and future

 

Since Albert Einstein, scientists have understood that, while our experience of time can feel like an unbending arrow forward, physics paints a much more complex picture. And, as this interview with Jeff Tollaksen, professor of physics at Chapman University in California, shows, the results of recent quantum experiments have led some physicists to once again entirely reconsider how we conceive of time. In a conversation with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for his interview series Closer to Truth, Tollaksen details how several recent mind-bending quantum particle experiments have blurred the line between past, present and future. Further, he argues, these experiments, which factor in ‘the relevance of the future to the present’ may demand a radical rethinking of quantum experimentation itself.