A
Anastasios Kampaktsis

  • Joined May 2, 2020
  • Hi all, new member here, just joined tonight.

    Although I don't have a background in Physics, I find it very fascinating and often inspiring to read books on physics, cosmology and other sciences which include consolidated knowledge, ideas and modern discussions on various matters.

    I would have liked this post to be under "The Nature of Time" but I couldn't add a new post there. It could fit here as well however, I think. These are thoughts on life and implications of how spacetime seems to be understood in Physics. You may also see it as a query which I haven't had the chance to discuss with people that know a thing or two about the current understanding of the universe, to say the least. So I apologise in advance for any layman misconceptions and if there are gross errors below, or smaller ones, I would be grateful if they were pointed out.

    At some point I became familiar with the concept that the past, present and future all exist simultaneously, if we consider spacetime as a 4D block. So in this context all moments are equally real. But later, while reading further about worldlines of conscious beings as described in Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical Universe", it became easier to distinguish between the perception of time by a human observer and the nature of time as it could theoretically be observed from outside the 4D block.

    So as humans, we seem to experience a time flow, as measured by our clocks, one moment at a time and perceive the world as 3D sections at each moment; which led me to explore, what should that imply from a person's perspective, at the marginal moment where they experience the end of their life, the moment where for everyone else consciousness definitively ceases to exist (assuming it doesn't survive the physical death). It occurred to me, that if the above are valid, i.e.

    1) in spacetime all points in space exist and all moments in time are equally real;

    2) we only perceive a "present" moment and none of the past or future;

    Then right after the moment of our death, we should find ourselves being born, back to the past; and since we don't have much self awareness until we are around 4 years old, we wake up in our little beds, obviously without any memory that we lived or will live but only the awareness that we're alive at that moment. Which it seems to me it is a consequence of the two points above, because our consciousness and therefore sense of self and experience of existence, have a certain worldline in spacetime, which is not erased after our death. In that case, it wouldn't be oblivion that awaits us but just an existence within a certain timeframe.

    And on top of that, perhaps we wake up at random versions of our life due to all possible timelines being potentially (also) real?

    Well, these were my thoughts. I'm thankful for having the opportunity to express them, I hope they make sense.

    Regards,

    Anastasios