What Is Time? | Professor Sean Carroll Explains Presentism and Eternalism

Love this format. No audience. No overuse of special effects. No host trying to be overly entertaining and funny like some of today's documentaries.

Yesterday is but a dream; tomorrow is but a vision, But today, well lived, Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Prof. Carroll has a genius for clear teaching. I can’t think of anyone else who explains complexity so smoothly and effectively.

After watching the lecture, I began to read comments and was so surprised that the large majority of commentators had a great understanding of the subject discussed and made more easy for me to get my concepts more clearer than ever.....keep on spreading the light of knowledge with a logical approach....my heartfelt thanks to the entire team who made this happened...

Carroll is awesome. He is able to distill scientific concepts to a level understandable by a common person. I saw him on Joe Rogan. The way he was able to explain heavy concepts...unbelievable.

i admire Sean's ability to speak so simple and clear about most fundamental and complex things.

What an incredible documentary! I enjoyed it so much I’m going to watch it again yesterday.

Fantastic lecture. His explanations are especially effective for those of us without any visual component to our memories/thoughts, who sometimes struggle the moment someone says "just picture/imagine/visualize such and such" Don't even get me started on "picture X and then rotate it in y manner"

Gosh. Sean Carroll you are such a smart man. You say things in what seem like to be the best possible ways to explain them. Such a great communicator. Intelligence is less valuable without good communication. Good communication is less valuable without good intelligence. You sir are what happens what you have both. TY for your hard work.

Truly one of the best science communicator out there.

And it’s enlightening to see how Sean has actually had a long time to develop, articulate, and get familiar with these ideas and his style of communicating. Interesting and maybe obvious to realize that ‘Biggest Ideas in the Universe’ didn’t completely fall out of thin air

I recall a childhood riddle: What's always approaching but never arrives? Tomorrow. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic I had this eerie feeling that time had slowed down, yet I felt like I was aging more rapidly. I'm not sure how to reconcile those perceived contradictions.

String theory may be true, but maybe knot.

Yeah I have to turn in a project in two hours; lets watch this video and hopefully gain some insight into my procrastination.

What is time? Time is something that can be used to describe changes. If everything is static then there is no need of time. So time is a state variable. It is man-made, mathematical, non-physical variable, to describe the state changes of the universe. It is independent from space. The existence of universe doesn’t need time, it is our human being that needs time to describe the changes of our universe.

Professor, you are a blessing to students like me, who are constantly learning!

“Time is the moving image of eternity.” --Plato

One of the great things about most of The Great Courses (TGC) lectures that I have seen so far, like this one, is that professors, like Dr. Sean Caroll here, bind all the concepts involved together in great talks, you get to see the whole picture, the tree and the forest. When I was in college, we did the calculations, I took tests, exams, finals, but never really had the chance to see things like this, in a holistic way. And TGC do all this in all its courses consistently. I would say that all universities should have this for people to be able to follow up, and to be more connected! Not to mention that we can always revisit these lectures over and over again, for example in search of inspiration, to research any particular topic. They help us to go from the tree to the forest back and forth all the time consistently!

Thank you for the video. Here in New York City 7:38 a.m. Wednesday October 6th watching again, and I love the background cool pictures. So many philosophical answers about "what is time."

Salamat po sa napakagandang explaination kahit mayroon akong konting hindi naiintindihan ay pakiramdam ko ay nasusundan ko ang iyong paliwanag kasi nararamdaman ko na tama ang iniisip ko sa mga sinasabi mo, halimbawa: Kapag iniisip mo na hindi ka masasakop ng oras, ang oras ay lilipas. At ikaw ay iyon padin, hindi maapektuhan ang iyong imahinasyon. Ito pa ang isang halimbawang: Makakalula mo ng future pero hindi ang ngayon, makakalkula mo ang future sa pag kalkula sa nakaraan. Pero naka depende ang ibang sagot ibang pamamaraan ng pag kalkula