[charli (OP)]

Margaret would like to know why:

"Einstein said that time is an illusion ..., but I can't find any reference explaining his reason for saying it ... does anyone actually know why he said it?"

[Zer0]

Hello Margaret!
🙏

To answer this with absolute Accuracy & Precision...


" Besso died in Geneva, aged 81. In a letter of condolence to the Besso family, Albert Einstein wrote “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one.”[7] Einstein died one month and 3 days after his friend, on 18 April 1955. "



Source - Wikipedia.



P.S. - https://www.christies.com/features/Einstein-letters-to-Michele-Besso-8422-1.aspx

(Perhaps, Now you might be wishing for a Blunt answer)
🤭
TC!
✌️

[Halc]

Einstein is referring to the apparent flow of time, that all space is 3 dimensional, changing in place over time, as opposed to 4 dimensional spacetime with equal ontological status of all events, not separated into being either past, present, or future.
His work on relativity made it clear that physics behaves identically despite the abstract ordering of those events. Relativity of simultaneity allowed a pair of events to be ambiguously ordered depending on the abstract coordinate system of choice. Thus an event in the past could be simultaneous with one in the future, which is contradictory. Perhaps only one of those coordinate systems corresponds to reality, but it became apparent that there was no empirical test for such an event status. Something for which there is no test and which makes zero empirical difference is in all likelihood an illusion.
Most people have quite a difficult time discarding such assumptions put there by evolution, but Einstein had an incredible capability to question such assumptions. Lorentz did not so much have this ability, which is why he didn't come out with relativity theory first, despite the head start.

[Zer0]

Greetings @charli !!!
😊
🙏
& A warm Welcome!

(Sorry i forgot to attend to my personal customary tradition.)


& Yes! I completely Understand the process of segregation in here now.
Hence You need Not respond to my personal comments.
👍
Hope U have Loads of Funn in here.


So...Why is Time an Illusion?


Is there a simplistic way to explain this to a Simpleton?

Is Time Fundamental?
Perhaps, coz then how else would We make sense of Other phenomenon which are described using Time in equations & calculations...Right?

But Time is Relative.
That is, Time can be different for different people at different locations.
🏔️
(Mountain tops vs Sea level)

Time can also flow at different rates for different people depending upon their rate of acceleration.
🚀

Time Dilates!
That is it expands, stretches or contracts.
🤔
But then so does Space?
But Space ain't no illusion.

So What's going on in here???
😑

' Two Separate events, at different locations, could be happening at the Same Time for Someone viewing it from a Specific Position. '
Hmm...mmm...umm!
🥴

Like say Margaret might be reading this, thinkin " Aha! Intellectual ".
😁
While Someone else reading would think, to themselves, silently, in whispers, " Oh! What a Bum! "
😒
(Different Frames of Reference Eh)

NOPE!
The above Analogy is Silly & makes No sense.
Can someone Please give me a simple & valid example on something happening in the Past & Future... happening at the same Present time?
🤔
(Perhaps, that's Not possible.
Perhaps, there is No example.
No way to test? Hence, Illusion?)



P.S. - Maybe what HE meant was that the Past, Present & Future are Illusions.
✌️

[charles1948]

Most people have quite a difficult time discarding such assumptions put there by evolution, but Einstein had an incredible capability to question such assumptions. Lorentz did not so much have this ability, which is why he didn't come out with relativity theory first, despite the head start.

I think you make a good point.  In the history of science, there many examples of two scientists competing to achieve a definitive formulation of an idea which was "in the air" at the time.

Such as Hooke and Newton, in the case of "Gravity"  And Wallace and Darwin, in the case of "Evolution".

One of the two, won out, and got all the historical. credit.  There are many other examples.

The same applies to technology.  Such as  - who  really invented the telephone?

[yor_on]

It's hard to pinpoint it but I would expect it to have a lot to do with Special relativity. From that you get both time dilation's and LorentzFitzGerald contractions. And if there is no way to define a 'absolute time', and no way to define a 'absolute length' globally, as in using a whole universe for defining it then time and all measurements becomes 'fluid'. Locally the same, as joining a 'same frame of reference' can show you but as soon they're not joined, starting to differ. Take a look at NIST and their experiments with atomic clocks for it.  General relativity rests on Special relativity, adding gravity to it.

[charles1948]

In our minds, we may dismiss "Time" as merely an illusion, but our bodies show it isn't.

[yor_on]

Quite so Charles, but that is when locally defined. Just as each one of us are a 'observer' of this 'global universe', defining both time and distances from our local definitions. It's two different aspect of a same reality, the local versus the global. Einstein had a sort of faith as I understands it, in something more than just us and our universe. So he took the global aspect, and when you look at it from that standpoint time and space is observer dependent, 'fluid' from a global perspective. That's how I read him anyway.

[geordief]

In order to correctly understand the processes in the universe is it necessary to build a composite of all viewpoints from all frames of references?

Such an endeavour would be
more than  gazillion to the gazillionth power  more detailed that the universe actually might itself be.

But might such a theoretical method of understanding encompass or resolve  apparent  logical roadblocks as that when someone's past is someone else's future  and  another person's appreciation of a simultaneity might encompass  an appreciation of a past and a future of someone else?

If there  is no global frame of reference ,do we have to attempt to amalgamate all of them even though this is not an undertaking that can ever be considered in any practical way?

Can we say that it is the local perception of the global that is in essence illusory (but only illusory if we are aiming for a perfect understanding-that happily we never attain or need to attain)?

[yor_on]

Two different aspect of that might be.

1. in where we define it all as abstractions. 'Laws', 'Properties' defining a universe and making it 'exist'.

2. Experimental logic's searching for 'grains', something touchable that exist and creates our reality.

One is totally abstract, the other expect it to come down to something 'there' creating the abstractions.