{"id":246055,"date":"2026-10-28T15:06:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T20:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/jim-al-khalili-physicists-are-being-sloppy-about-time"},"modified":"2026-10-28T15:06:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T20:06:47","slug":"jim-al-khalili-physicists-are-being-sloppy-about-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/jim-al-khalili-physicists-are-being-sloppy-about-time","title":{"rendered":"Jim Al-Khalili: Physicists Are Being Sloppy About Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Jim Al-Khalili: Physicists Are Being Sloppy About Time\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dmqxw4M3yEM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Physicists say space and time are the same thing. They are being sloppy. Jim Al-Khalili has spent his career on the foundations of physics, and his new book makes the case that the past and the future are equally real, and the laws of physics cannot explain why you can only move in one direction. That is the central mystery of time travel. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.<\/p>\n<p>The block universe says all times coexist and the present moment is not special. Loschmidt\u2019s paradox says the fundamental equations of physics are reversible, and yet ice never unmelts, cream never separates from coffee. Nobody has solved that contradiction. The entanglement past hypothesis, his own new proposal developed with a colleague at UC San Diego, proposes that the answer is not in thermodynamics but in quantum entanglement growing from almost nothing at the Big Bang.<\/p>\n<p>The conversation covers what the block universe actually implies about the future and free will, what Einstein actually believed about whether the past and future are equally real, why removing gravity means removing time itself, and whether AI can ever experience time the way conscious beings do. Al-Khalili says Richard Dawkins told him Claude is truly conscious. Al-Khalili thinks he is very wrong.<\/p>\n<p>What you\u2019ll hear:<br \/> \u2013Why Al-Khalili disagreed with the Thomas Gold paper as a grad student but did not have the maths to prove it.<br \/> \u2013What fine-tuning of the fundamental constants has to do with why the past hypothesis may not be needed.<br \/> \u2013Why the Clockwork Orange Easter egg ended up on the cover of a physics book published by Princeton.<br \/> \u2013Why Richard Dawkins thinks Claude is conscious and why Al-Khalili thinks he is very wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is nowhere in modern physics, our understanding of the laws of physics, that would explain that flow of time.\u201d \u2014 Jim Al-Khalili.<\/p>\n<p>CHAPTERS.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/jim-al-khalili-physicists-are-being-sloppy-about-time\">Continue reading \u201cJim Al-Khalili: Physicists Are Being Sloppy About Time\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists say space and time are the same thing. They are being sloppy. Jim Al-Khalili has spent his career on the foundations of physics, and his new book makes the case that the past and the future are equally real, and the laws of physics cannot explain why you can only move in one direction. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,41,1617,6,1515],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-information-science","category-quantum-physics","category-robotics-ai","category-time-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}