Does time exist? Perimeter's public lecture

"Is it the weekend yet?"… "Time flies!" … "There aren't enough hours in a day!" – these are all phrases we hear often, and sometimes say ourselves. But what if time didn't exist? What if we lived in a world free of alarm clocks, appointment times, and calendars?

On Wednesday, June 6, as part of Perimeter Institute's Public Lecture Series presented by Sun Life Financial, Dr. Julian Barbour, author and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, will explore modern indications that time and motion may be well founded illusions. In this talk, Barbour will examine how the Wheeler-DeWitt equation of quantum gravity suggests the fundamentally timeless nature of the quantum universe.

Barbour will also raise unresolved mysteries of our conscious experiences, and why these might provide insight into how a fundamentally timeless universe may be perceived as intensely temporal. A key result of his proposal could be an explanation of the asymmetry between the past and the future.

Julian Barbour is a theoretical physicist, who obtained his PhD on the foundations of Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968. He has worked independently on foundational issues in physics for 45 years, specializing in the study of time and inertia. He has authored many research papers and several books, including "Absolute or Relative Motion?" (1989), "The End of Time" (1999), and "The Discovery of Dynamics" (2001).

Julian Barbour's lecture, entitled "Does Time Exist?", will be held Wednesday, June 6 at 7:00 PM (ET) in Waterloo, Ontario. Tickets will be available starting Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 9:00am (ET).

Provided by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics